Hopelessness finds us all at some point in our lives. These days, it might even feel unavoidable—the state of the world is enough to make many of us want to shrink, to crawl away from it all. Back in ...

Colin Meloy’s got a purdy mouth; so would say an old-timin’ troubadour. The Decemberists’ frontman’s word-of-the-day lexicon enters the charmed, if not simple, language of alt-country—the latest ...