Red Right Ankle — The Decemberists

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYwkmPKsctQ

I don't know folk music, really. I know the genre of folk music, music written and recorded to sound like older music, written with Americana heritage, that goes alongside Ichabod Crane and pumpkins as symbols of fall in the northeast, things I'm tangentially aware of but seem never to have experienced — and when I have, they don't much count, they're exceptional and rare, the way that vacations seem. I've gone apple-picking, but it wasn't a part of my childhood the way perhaps it ought have been. And this is folk music, simple and repetitive and with provocative lyrics, sad and uptempo and with a definitive story — emotive but not emotional. The Decemberists are an art band; they reach for many goals and hit some of them, but this is one they hit, powerfully.