The Crane Wife is the fourth album by The Decemberists, released in 2006. It was produced by Tucker Martine and Chris Walla, and is the band's first album on the Capitol Records label. The album was inspired by a Japanese folk tale, and centers on two song cycles, The Crane Wife and The Island, the latter inspired by William Shakespeare'sThe Tempest. National Public Radio listeners voted The Crane Wife the best album of 2006. The album cover was designed by the Portland artist Carson Ellis, Colin Meloy's wife, who has created artwork for each of the band's albums.
The story of ''The Crane Wife''
The Crane Wife is an old Japanese folktale. While there are many variations of the tale, a common version is that a poor man finds an injured crane on his doorstep, takes it in and nurses it back to health. After he releases the crane, a woman appears at his doorstep with whom he falls in love and marries. Because they need money, his wife offers to weave wondrous clothes out of silk that they can sell at the market, but only if he agrees never to watch her making them. They begin to sell them and live a comfortable life, but he soon makes her weave them more and more. Oblivious to his wife's declining health, his greed increases. He eventually peeks in to see what she is doing to make the silk she weaves so desirable. He is shocked to discover that at the loom is a crane plucking feathers from her own body and weaving them into the loom. The crane, seeing him, flies away and never returns.
"When the War Came"
This song is a portrayal of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. During the siege, the German army surrounded the city entirely, preventing anything from going in or out. As a result, many died of starvation, and the final death-toll is estimated to be over one million. The song also has a political undertone to it; it is stated that despite the fact that people put their faith in the government which swore to protect them, they ended up being left unprepared and unequipped to fight off the Germans. The song references Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist who died in a Sovietprison camp, in the lyrics. Colin Meloy explained:
The Crane Wife was highly acclaimed by music critics, earning an 84% positive out of all reviews culled by Metacritic, and remains one of the Decemberists' best-reviewed efforts. Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times praised its progressive rock influences with the tongue-in-cheek description "the best Jethro Tull album since Heavy Horses". Stephen M. Deusner of Pitchfork wrote that the album "further magnifies and refines strengths" and that their folk rock has been "honed to an incisively sharp point". It was ranked #41 on Pitchforks list of the top 50 albums of 2006, #19 on PopMatters list of the top 60 albums of 2006, and JustPressPlay named it the second best album of the 2000s. In a listener poll by National Public Radio, The Crane Wife was picked as the #1 album of 2006.
Release
As of February 2009 it had sold 289,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, close to 100,000 more than the band's final Kill Rock Stars release, "Picaresque."
"The Crane Wife 3" was covered by Marianne Faithfull on her album Easy Come, Easy Go. She performed it live when she appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman on March 31, 2009, and on Later… with Jools Holland, transmitted on April 14, 2009, on the British BBC2 TV channel.
"The Perfect Crime #2" was played on the television show Gilmore Girls in an episode entitled "'S Wonderful, 'S Marvelous".
"The Island: Come and See" was played during the first episode of New Amsterdam.
