Castaways and Cutouts by The Decemberists

Castaways and Cutouts, the Decemberists' first full-length, came out on the Hush label on May 21, 2002, and Kill Rock Stars reissued it a year later, on May 6, 2003. It's the Portland band's opening statement, and the whole bookish, theatrical world is already in place: Colin Meloy's reedy tenor spinning yarns out of old history and folklore, and songs that play like short stories.

The title comes from a line in "California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade", and the cover is the work of Carson Ellis, then Meloy's girlfriend and later his wife, who has drawn the art for every Decemberists album since. It's a modest, homespun-sounding record, but the storyteller's voice is fully formed, and "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect" still sounds like a small, strange treasure.

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