New Video: The Decemberists – Calamity Song

The Decemberists return with a new video off their Number 1 selling album (still sounds weird, doesn’t it?), The King is Dead. The song is Calamity Song, and lead singer Colin Meloy has something to say about it (via Consequence of Sound).

“I wrote “Calamity Song” shortly after I’d finished reading David Foster Wallace’s epic Infinite Jest. The book didn’t so much inspire the song itself, but Wallace’s irreverent and brilliant humor definitely wound its way into the thing. And I had this funny idea that a good video for the song would be a re-creation of the Enfield Tennis Academy’s round of Eschaton — basically, a global thermonuclear crisis re-created on a tennis court — that’s played about a third of the way into the book. Thankfully, after having a good many people balk at the idea, I found a kindred spirit in Michael Schur, a man with an even greater enthusiasm for Wallace’s work than my own. With much adoration and respect to this seminal, genius book, this is what we’ve come up with. I can only hope DFW would be proud.”

Check out if the video is as pretentious as the statement about the inspiration for the song.

UPDATE: The NPR video link sucks doesn’t work, so check out the video on the NPR page. Then come back here and spend dates reading this fine website.

The Decemberists – Calamity Song