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Often with an album from The Decemberists, one expects the poetic, the intellectual and the hauntingly strange to permeate their folk and indie tunes.

With their fifth album release, The Hazards of Love, they don’t disappoint, but they don’t do quite what we expect.Mainly, this album is a 17 track story spun to tell the tale of “Margaret, her shape shifting lover William, an evil queen and an even more evil knave.”

This album isn’t shy about the theme it is wrestling with; four tracks are titled The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle The Thistles Undone), The Hazards of Love 2 (Wager All), The Hazards of Love 3 (Revenge!), and finally The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned).

Each Hazards song is delicately woven and distinctive enough to stand as the strong tracks on this album. While The Decemberists have put forth some notably dark songs, such as “The Shankill Butchers,” on this new release the focus is the development of the story. Each track literally transitions into the next so that the listener is drawn in and whisked away.

The groups manages this flow in such a way that even the tracks move seamlessly from one to the next without break.Surprisingly, tracks like “A Bower Scene” and “The Queen’s Rebuke/ The Crossing” emphasize pounding electric guitar and a rock strategy that is new for The Decemberists. The tracks that incorporate female vocals such as “Won’t Want For Love (Margaret In The Taiga)” demonstrate a varying elements that layer the tracks with emotion and characters necessary in any engaging story.

Towards the end of the album, “Annan Water” and “The Hazards of Love (The Drowned)” strike a true Decemberist chord of melancholy and thought that allow true fans to love and cherish this album as much if not more than their previous projects. The Hazards of Love will take more time, thought and consideration to piece the themes and pared down tones together, but the intricate narrative beckons the dedicated listener to do so.