Yankee Bayonet — The Decemberists

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03eo0asomyM

I was lucky — I heard this album in the nor'east, in Massachusetts, on vacation, by the seaside and surrounded by the old America — museums, vintage downs, thrift shops, history in action and the smell of the salt. And the album became vintage, 1700s. It helps that it has a mood and a place and a theme, but it was more than that — it's about roots. Knowing who you are and what you're from — it stretches the boundaries of empathy. We keep to ourselves. It's hard to think of our ancestors as people with struggles — overarching ones like marriage and death, and tiny ones like market squabbles and leaky faucets. This could have been a pop song for one of them — if I were a DAR, or a WASP, not a Jew.