All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Onion (A.V. Club)

The songs brim with melodic ideas, but the album never overwhelms, because Meloy doesn't try to pack every minute with words and hooks.

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100

Tiny Mix Tapes

The band's most ambitious, mind-blowing, and best record yet.

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100

Delusions of Adequacy

The Decemberists have always had a flair for the dramatic, but it's refined and realized more than ever on their amazing new album The Crane Wife.

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100

musicOMH.com

Their best album to date.

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ShakingThrough.net

The Crane Wife is an album that nicely fits into the Decemberists' universe and has roots in earlier works, but sounds -- and hangs together -- better than any of them.

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Urb

This is an amazing, innovative, storytelling record that takes you on [a] fantastic, fun trip. [Oct 2006, p.118]

Neumu.net

The Crane Wife is an impressively realized song cycle.

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Billboard

Another extraordinary Decemberists album.

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The New York Times

As a sustained effort, it represents the band’s sharpest and most satisfying work, and one of the most accomplished albums of its kind this year.

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Austin Chronicle

The Crane Wife could be the best Robyn Hitchcock album made in several years; the lyrical marriage of whimsy and death bear the fruits of a master class led by the former Soft Boy.

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Pitchfork

Winsomely balancing frivolity and gravity, the Decemberists assemble an oddball menagerie of the usual rogues and rascals, soldiers and criminals, lovers and baby butchers-- but they've got a lot more tricks up their sleeves than previous albums had hinted.

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E! Online

[The Crane Wife] not only matches past pop glories, in most cases, it tops them.

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Entertainment Weekly

The jarring faux-metal riffage of "When the War Came" exposes Meloy's limits, but several of these studies in heartbreak and homicide rank among his most moving. [6 Oct 2006, p.68]

NOW Magazine

Oddly, the unconventional sequencing and measured pace of the album make the fragmented mess hold together quite well.

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Blender

The most tightly hook-larded, colorfully produced, listenable Decemberists record to date. [Nov 2006, p.138]

Alternative Press

The Crane Wife isn't automatic for the people yet, but it's far from green. [Nov 2006, p.188]

Spin

The best-sounding Decemberists record to date. [Nov 2006, p.103]

Playlouder

There are enough pinnacles of musical achievement married with subtle storytelling to justify the scale of this album.

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The Guardian

It is all as self-consciously stagey as a Wes Anderson movie - too arch and florid to really engage the heart, but bold and wondrous entertainment none the less.

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PopMatters

While the sound of this record is different from previous releases, it is only ever-so-subtly-so—and it just might be better.

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Under The Radar

The Crane Wife is no sell-out, retaining and even expanding their eccentricities, spinning more of Meloy’s beguiling characters and engrossing stories into their fourth straight, stellar full-length. [#15]

Uncut

A real grower. [Feb 2007, p.73]

cokemachineglow

Meloy’s ever-multiplying prog-rock ambitions are well on their way to swallowing him whole, but for now he seems to be comfortable enough as a guy writing sweet folk pop songs alongside ever-shifting song suites and polite hard rock.

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The Phoenix

In their music... the Decemberists are more confident and willing to stretch out than ever before.

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Rolling Stone

There's a kick in the way song after song masks his darkish vision in elegantly hooky arrangements whose sonic signature owes more to folk rock than to prog or musical theater. [5 Oct 2006, p.68]

Q Magazine

[It] could easily have been a staggeringly pompous exercise; instead, it's rendered intriguing by a liberated approach. [Feb 2007, p.99]

Slant Magazine

Certain listeners will declare The Crane Wife the best record yet from the Decemberists, but it’s still too inconsistent to be declared the masterpiece of which Meloy and company are capable.

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All Music Guide

Some cuts, like the English murder ballad "Shankill Butchers" and "Summersong"... sound like outtakes from previous records, but by the time the listener arrives at the Donovan-esque (in a good way) closer, "Sons & Daughters," the less tasty bits of The Crane Wife seem a wee bit sweeter.

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Magnet

Ambitious, risky and occasionally rambling, this is a song cycle best absorbed in a start-to-finish listen. [#73, p.93]

Hartford Courant

It makes for compelling listening, even if you're not always sure what, exactly, is going on.

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Stylus Magazine

Tempting as it may be to assume that beefing up their sound would have automatically made the Decemberists markedly better, the truth is that these strides may have at least partially come at the expense of the things that always made the band so singularly compelling.

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Prefix Magazine

Most of The Crane Wife consists of rehashes of Decemberists staples and by-the-books, cookie-cutter indie pop that runs the gamut between pleasant enough ("O, Valencia!") and barely tolerable ("Summersong").

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New Musical Express

Sometimes you wish Meloy would just put away his studied thesp-schlock and say, "Man, I'm sick of singing about Victorian peasants. I got dumped once. I want to write about that..." [27 Jan 2007, p.31]

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.8 (out of 10) based on 119 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

B Martin gave it a10:
A triumph!

NO No gave it a0:
Somethings terribly wrong... how can a crap band like this get raved reviews?

David F gave it a7:
A little pretentious. I don't know if that's the word I'm looking for, but it's something like that.

Joe B gave it a10:
Astonishing. Breathtaking. Grandiose and sweeping. Meloy accompanies the smooth rhythm with his notes as well as he does for the hectic passion, so easily yet identifiably created. With this record he also, undoubtedly, sets himself apart from almost any other lyricist writing at the moment. His prose and storytelling demand to be listened to, moving from the elegant to the bluntness. The sublime to the ridiculous. The Crane wife may not be the most important album out of the states in the last five years, but it is certainly the best. When stripped down to it's essence (which is incredibly hard to do) the record is, at it's core, a novel. A novel of beauty and rare , pure genius.

jt c gave it a9:
This album is the bomb. Gets better every time I listen to it. If you like good original (yet accessible) music and songwriting, you'll like this album. If you don't, you won't.

Rob I gave it a10:
This is my first listen to a Decemberist Album, and I find myself listening to it over and over again. Fanf***ingtastic album. It has been 20 or more years since an album grabbed me the way this one did. I was introduced to it about 6 months ago, and I still can't get enough of it.

Waterhouse gave it a10:
Decemberists' best. Diverse, innovative, and dare I say edgy? In my opinion, flawless. Anyone presuming to review this lower than 8 out of 10 needs their ears thoroughly examined.

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The Crane Wife

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