Cedar Cinema presents Here Come the Waves: The Hazards of Love Visualized

You've heard the ambitious concept album by The Decemberists, and maybe you were at Rock the Garden this year or one of the other live shows the band took on the road, along with the two lead female vocalists Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) and Becky Stark (Lavender Diamond). Now you can see a unique, animated version of the now classic album. Here Come the Waves: The Hazards of Love Visualized is the work of filmmakers Guilherme Marcondes, Julia Pott, Peter Sluszka and Santa Maria, who have created animations to accompany individual sections of music from the album. The full-length video originally premiered at a show in Los Angeles on October 19, and has just been made available exclusively from iTunes. Come see this special low-priced screening with a bunch of your friends and hear the music the way it was meant to be heard, loud and clear on The Cedar's great sound system!

For the uninitiated, The Hazards of Love is a rock opera/concept album, with all songs contributing to a unified narrative, similar to the use of recurring stories in The Decemberists' earlier work The Crane Wife. The plot is a love story: a woman named Margaret (voiced by Stark) falls in love with a shape-shifting boreal forest dweller named William (voiced by Colin Meloy). A jealous forest queen (voiced by Worden), the villainous Rake (also voiced by Meloy) and an ensemble of recurring characters bring conflict to the album's story arc.

According to Billboard, "Instead of featuring the story's characters, the visuals function as
impressionistic landscapes and atmospheres evocative of the unfolding
drama like a richly imagined liquid lightshow. They feature textured,
hyperrealistic floral animations that recall the imagery of Lewis
Carroll, dancing heavenly bodies, and sublime experiments in lighting."

Tickets available at the door: only $3!