::Firsties Week:: The Decemberists - The Infanta

The Decemberists are a band that refuse to exist in one time. They're songs touch on themes of rastabouts, wayward ship captains and Victorian love affairs and each one seems to be pulled right out of a dusty old classic novel. Needless to say they're unique.

"The Infanta" is from the album Picaresque and starts it off with a grand parade, celebrating the birth of a royal child. The song begins with a low rumbling and a horn signifying the approaching "folderol." And then the parade enters and excitement, confetti and cannon-fire fill the air. The music is middle-eastern, grand and adventurous sounding. You gotta hand it to Colin Meloy's vocabulary. I'm almost certain this is the only song ever that uses the lyric "among five-score pachyderm each canopied and passengered, sits the duke and his duchesses luscious young girls."

Here she comes in her palanquin
on the back of an elephant
on a bed made of linen and sequins and silk
all astride on her father's line
with the king and his concubines
and her nurse with her pitchers of liquors and milk
and we'll all come praise the infanta
and we'll all come praise the infanta

Among five score pachyderm
each canopied and passengered
sit the duke and the duchess' luscious young girls
within sight of the baroness
seething spite for this lithe largesse
by her side sits the baron
her barrenness barbs her
and we'll all come praise the infanta
and we'll all come praise the infanta

A phalanx on camelback
thirty ranks on a forward tack
followed close, their shiny bright standards a-waving
while behind in their coach-and-fours
ride the wives of the king of Moors
And the veiled young virgin, the prince's betrothed
and we'll all come praise the infanta
and we'll all come praise the infanta

And as she sits upon her place
her innocence laid on her face
from all atop the parapets blow a multitude of coronets
melodies rhapsodical and fair
and all our hearts afire
the sky ablaze with cannon fire
we all raise our voices to the air
to the air...

And above all this folderol
on a bed made of chaparral
she is laid, a coronal placed on her brow
and the babe, all in slumber dreams
of a place filled with quiet streams
and the lake where her cradle was pulled from the water
and we'll all come praise the infanta
and we'll all come praise the infanta