THE HAZARDS OF LOVE

This is a progressive/folk rock-opera masterpiece. The individual songs are immediately accessible, yet they flow into one another to tell an epic captivating fairy tale.

Musical themes are repeated throughout the album (the title track is broken into four parts, once to introduce the story, twice in the middle, and then again to wrap up the tale).

Frontman Colin Meloy recruited two female vocalists to augment his vocals in order to have play the role of the maiden who finds herself pregnant by a shape-shifting creature who may be her future husband.

The music incorporates folk, distorted guitar hard rock, harpsichord, orchestral strings, and everything else in the kitchen sink.

Guitarist Chris Funk reminds me of Yes' Steve Howe, playing all kinds of stringed instruments: electric guitar, acoustic guitar, mandolin, autoharp, and pedal steel.

And you've got to love lyrics that aren't afraid to use archaic English ("Thou inconsolable daughter / Said the sister / When wilt thou trouble the water / In the cistern")!