What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World

Explaining the concept (or lack of concept) behind the album, frontman Colin Meloy told American Songwriter: “I think the last couple records have been conceptual. I think Picaresque was sort of conceptual in that we rented out a church and recorded it there and the sounds have a lot of space to them, and a lot of the songs are very narrative. Hazards of Love is obviously conceptual because it is a concept record. On The King Is Dead, while the songs aren’t connected in any conceptual way, I do think of it as being conceptual in that we came into it being like, “We want to make a really simple record. Really stripped down. We’re going to record it in a barn. We’re doing everything we can to give it some earth, give some dirt to it.” So coming into this one, since we had so much time, we were talking to Tucker Martine, the producer, and we decided to just let the songs dictate the concept and not try to force any concept on them and see what happens. So in some respects it was sort of an experiment for us.”