The Decemberists Channel “In Patagonia”
Travel Blog • Michael Yessis • 10.10.06 | 6:44 AM ET
Looks like another beloved indie band is cribbing from a classic travel book. Last time around it was The Hold Steady. This time its The Decemberists. According to Los Angeles Times music critic Ann Powers, the band’s new album features “a rambling, 11-minute suite of watery horror stories, climaxing with the chilling pronouncement, ‘Go to sleep ... you’ll not feel the drowning.’” Songwriter Colin Meloy tells Powers: “I got that from ‘In Patagonia’ by Bruce Chatwin. There’s a great section about a 19th century sailor who had journaled all this stuff when he was a kid. At one point his boat is stuck in a squall and it looks like it’s going to capsize, and he’s down in his bunk with some of the older boys, and one says that to him. And it really struck me—wow, so harrowing.”
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Michael Yessis is the cofounder and coeditor-in-chief of World Hum.
