The Decemberists' "Of Angels and Angles"

I just listened to the Decemberists' Picaresque and noticed a small thing about "Of Angels and Angles."  The "aways"s in the lines "Down we go away / Away" have melismas.  The first is just F# G F#, but the second is F# G F# E D G.  Both - but especially the second - give a sense of the movement (downward movement in particular, since the phrase descends) that's mentioned in the previous line: "And, darlin', we go a-drownin'."

The Decemberists' Her Majesty

I just listened to the Decemberists' Her Majesty and noticed a couple things.

"The Gymnast, High above the Ground"

The "light brigade" in the line "Waiting out this long light brigade" is a phrase from Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" (I'm not sure if he coined the phrase, but his poem is probably the reason it's well-known).  I don't think it's used the same way in the song though.

About a year ago, I found an-other instance of the same phrase in "Cavalry Captain" from What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World.  There, it's "we'll away on the light brigade."  Again, I don't think it's used in the same sense in which Tennyson used it, but it is the same phrase.

"Song for Myra Goldberg"

This is just a minor point, but the line "Listen in as shin-kicked Jim relates his story sad" could be parsed two different ways, hinging on the "sad" in "Jim relates his story sad."  It could be either inversion ("his story sad" instead of "his sad story") or a flat adverb ("Jim relates his story sad" instead of "Jim relates his story sadly").  Either it's a sad story or Jim tells it in a sad manner; it's grammatical hair-splitting, but there is a slight difference.

The Decemberists' "Rox in the Box"

I listened to some Decemberists albums this morning, including The King Is Dead.  I've always liked the lines "and you won't make a dime / on this gray granite mountain mine" in "Rox in the Box," but listening to the song this time, I realized why I like it.

First, there's the alliteration between gray and granite and between mountain and mine, which somehow I had never noticed.  Apparently, I'm really bad at recognizing alliteration if it isn't written.

Second, the rhythm of the line is engaging.  Despite having been an English major, I know virtually nothing about meter and stressed syllables and all that, so I can't actually explain the rhythm of this line, but I like it nonetheless.