Decemberists songwriter and frontman Colin Meloy first came across the story of The Crane Wife several years ago, in the children’s section of a bookstore in Portland. A venerable Japanese folk tale that has been handed down in countless variations and translations through the centuries (as venerable folk tales are wont to do), the deceptively simple story has stayed with Meloy ever since.
“I thought that it would be a great thing to try to put it to some sort of song form, be it a single tune or something longer,” he recalls. “So I struggled...
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