The Crane Wife

The Crane Wife
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For the Japanese folktale, see Tsuru no Ongaeshi .
2006 studio album by The Decemberists
Further information: Tsuru no Ongaeshi

^ Harrington, Jim (December 3, 2015). "New Year's Eve: Decemberists, Patti Smith, Maceo Parker and other big shows for Dec. 31" . The Mercury News . Retrieved December 22, 2020 .

^ Ingalls, Chris (June 15, 2017). "Fleet Foxes: Crack-Up" . PopMatters . Retrieved December 22, 2020 .

^ Jump up to: a b Monger, James Christopher. "The King Is Dead - The Decemberists | Songs, Reviews, Credits" . AllMusic . Retrieved December 22, 2020 .

^ "NPR Music: NPR Listeners Pick the Best CDs of 2006" . Npr.org. December 7, 2006 . Retrieved August 4, 2010 .

^ Jump up to: a b "When The War Came by The Decemberists Songfacts" . Songfacts.com . Retrieved August 4, 2010 .

^ Dillon, Martin (March 2, 1999). The Shankill Butchers: The Real Story of Cold-Blooded Mass Murder . Psychology Press. p. xvi. ISBN 0415922313 .

^ Jump up to: a b "Reviews for The Crane Wife by The Decemberists" . Metacritic . Retrieved March 2, 2016 .

^ Monger, James Christopher. "The Crane Wife – The Decemberists" . AllMusic . Retrieved March 2, 2016 .

^ Murray, Noel (October 3, 2006). "The Decemberists: The Crane Wife" . The A.V. Club . Retrieved February 10, 2012 .

^ Wolk, Douglas (November 2006). "The Decemberists: The Crane Wife" . Blender (53): 138. Archived from the original on October 19, 2006 . Retrieved March 2, 2016 .

^ Vozick-Levinson, Simon (September 29, 2006). "The Crane Wife" . Entertainment Weekly . Archived from the original on July 24, 2018 . Retrieved March 2, 2016 .

^ Lynskey, Dorian (January 26, 2007). "The Decemberists, The Crane Wife" . The Guardian . Retrieved March 2, 2016 .

^ "The Decemberists: The Crane Wife". NME : 50. July 23, 2005.

^ Jump up to: a b Deusner, Stephen M. (October 3, 2006). "The Decemberists: The Crane Wife" . Pitchfork . Retrieved March 2, 2016 .

^ Christgau, Robert (September 28, 2006). "The Crane Wife" . Rolling Stone . Retrieved March 2, 2016 .

^ Raftery, Brian (November 2006). "War of Words" . Spin . 22 (11): 103 . Retrieved March 2, 2016 .

^ Scoppa, Bud (January 16, 2007). "The Decemberists – The Crane Wife" . Uncut . Archived from the original on February 13, 2007 . Retrieved March 2, 2016 .

^ DeRogatis, Jim (November 5, 2006). "Positively Prog" . www.jimdero.com .

^ "Best Albums of 2006" . PopMatters . December 23, 2006.

^ "Fifty Years of Great Music: The Top 100 Albums of the 2000s" . Justpressplay.net. January 14, 2010 . Retrieved August 4, 2010 .

^ NPR Listeners Pick the Best CDs of 2006

^ Ayers, Michael D. (March 2, 2009). "Hazardous Conditions: The Decemberists" . Billboard . Retrieved February 23, 2019 .

Connect Sets (EP)
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We All Raise Our Voices to the Air (Live Songs 04.11–08.11) (album)

The Crane Wife is the fourth album by The Decemberists , released in 2006. It was produced by Tucker Martine and Chris Walla , and is the band's first album on the Capitol Records label. The album was inspired by a Japanese folk tale, and centers on two song cycles, The Crane Wife and The Island , the latter inspired by William Shakespeare 's The Tempest . National Public Radio listeners voted The Crane Wife the best album of 2006. [4]

The album cover was designed by the Portland artist Carson Ellis , Colin Meloy 's wife, who has created artwork for each of the band's albums.

The Crane Wife is an old Japanese folktale . While there are many variations of the tale, a common version is that a poor man finds an injured crane on his doorstep (or outside with an arrow in it), takes it in and nurses it back to health. After he releases the crane, a woman appears at his doorstep with whom he falls in love and marries. Because they need money, his wife offers to weave wondrous clothes out of silk that they can sell at the market, but only if he agrees never to watch her making them. They begin to sell them and live a comfortable life, but he soon makes her weave them more and more. Oblivious to his wife's declining health, his greed increases. He eventually peeks in to see what she is doing to make the silk she weaves so desirable. He is shocked to discover that at the loom is a crane plucking feathers from her own body and weaving them into the loom. The crane, seeing him, flies away and never returns.

This song is a portrayal of the 900-day Siege of Leningrad during the Second World War. During the siege, the German army surrounded the city entirely, preventing anything from going in or out. As a result, many died of starvation, and the final death-toll is estimated to be over one million. The song also has a political undertone to it; it is stated that despite the fact that people put their faith in the government which swore to protect them, they ended up being left unprepared and unequipped to fight off the Germans. [5] The song references Nikolai Vavilov , a Russian botanist who died in a Soviet prison camp, in the lyrics. Colin Meloy explained:

The last great book I read was Hunger by Elise Blackwell . It's about the siege of Leningrad in World War II, and there was a botanical institute. During the siege, which lasted a long time, the entire population was starving, but all of the botanists in the institute swore themselves to protect the catalog of seeds and plants and things, from not only a starving population, but also from themselves. It's pretty amazing. I actually ended up writing "When the War Came", a song on the new record, about that. [5]
"Shankill Butchers" is about the Shankill Butchers , a faction of the Ulster Volunteer Force . The UVF is a Loyalist paramilitary organization. The Shankill Butchers split off from the UVF in the mid-1970s and carried out a series of grisly murders. These are the basis of the song. The Butchers abducted seven random Catholic citizens of Northern Ireland and killed them in the middle of the night by slashing their throats. They also carried out several other shootings and bomb attacks, killing as many as 32 people. [6]

The Crane Wife was highly acclaimed by music critics, earning an 84% positive out of all reviews culled by Metacritic , [7] and remains one of the Decemberists' best-reviewed efforts. Jim DeRogatis of the Chicago Sun-Times praised its progressive rock influences with the tongue-in-cheek description "the best Jethro Tull album since Heavy Horses ". [18] Stephen M. Deusner of Pitchfork wrote that the album "further magnifies and refines [the Decemberists'] strengths" and that their folk rock has been "honed to an incisively sharp point". [14] It was ranked #41 on Pitchfork ' s list of the top 50 albums of 2006, #19 on PopMatters ' list of the top 60 albums of 2006, [19] and JustPressPlay named it the second best album of the 2000s. [20] In a listener poll by National Public Radio , The Crane Wife was picked as the #1 album of 2006. [21]

As of February 2009 it had sold 289,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, close to 100,000 more than the band's final Kill Rock Stars release, "Picaresque." [22]

According to the liner notes of The Crane Wife .

"The Island: Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel the Drowning"
"Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)"
"Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) (Alternate Take)"
"Culling Of The Fold (Alternate Take)"
"Hurdles Even Here (Full Band Take)"
"The Perfect Crime #2 (Early Take)"
"The Island; Come And See-The Landlord's Daughter-You'll Not Feel The Drowning"
"Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then) (Home Demo)"
"The Capp Street Girls (Home Demo)"
"The Day I Knew You'd Not Come Back (Home Demo)"
"The Crane Wife 1, 2 & 3 (Home Demo)"

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The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays Kindle Edition
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A memoir in essays that expands on the viral sensation “The Crane Wife” with a frank and funny look at love, intimacy, and self in the twenty-first century. From friends and lovers to blood family and chosen family, this “elegant masterpiece” (Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger ) asks what more expansive definitions of love might offer us all. Hauser builds her life's inventory out of deconstructed personal narratives, resulting in a reading experience that's rich like a complicated dessert—not for wolfing down but for savoring in small bites." —The New York Times “Hauser’s wry, introspective investigation of her assumptions about love will likely free readers to examine their own personal narratives as well ... ‘The rare happy ending I appreciate is one that makes room for the whole painful fact of the world at the same time it offers the reader some joy,’ she writes. The Crane Wife embraces this philosophy again and again as Hauser excavates her past loves and losses, thoughtfully examines them and declares the pain of love to be worth the risk.” — BookPage Ten days after calling off her wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to Texas to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, she realized she'd almost signed up to live someone else's life. Hauser releases herself from traditional narratives of happiness and goes looking for ways of living that leave room for the unexpected, making plenty of mistakes along the way. She kisses Internet strangers and officiates at a wedding. She rereads Rebecca in the house her boyfriend once shared with his ex-wife and rewinds Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story to learn how not to lose yourself in a relationship. She thinks about Florence Nightingale at a robot convention and grief at John Belushi’s rock and roll gravesite, and the difference between those stories we’re asked to hold versus those we choose to carry. Told with the late-night barstool directness of your wisest, most bighearted friend, The Crane Wife is a book for everyone whose life doesn't look the way they thought it would; for everyone learning to find joy in the not-knowing; for everyone trying, if sometimes failing, to build a new sort of life story, a new sort of family, a new sort of home, to live in.
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A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE SUMMER: TIME, Good Morning America, LitHub, BookRiot, The Rumpus, Texas Monthly, The Independent, & more "There's more to this memoir in essays than breakups and so much more to the book than the essay that started it all. An intellectually vigorous and emotionally resonant account of how a self gets created over time, The Crane Wife will satisfy and inspire anyone who has ever asked, 'How did I get here, and what happens now?'...Hauser builds her life's inventory out of deconstructed personal narratives, resulting in a reading experience that's rich like a complicated dessert — not for wolfing down but for savoring in small bites." — New York Times , Mary Laura Philpott “A frank exploration of intimacy and romance that doesn’t always lead to a ‘happily ever after’...Hauser is a playful, energetic and always likable writer...I kept thinking about all of the people in my life into whose hands I can’t wait to put The Crane Wife .” — Washington Post "Hauser...weav[es] together a memoir about redefining love and living life outside of traditional boundaries." —Time "Brilliant...This collection is not about neat, happy endings. It’s a constant search for self-discovery...Hauser’s worldview feels fresh and even radical." —Oprah Daily “After reading this forthcoming memoir-in-essays by the warm, wise, wry, and wonderful CJ Hauser. . . you’ll have to go fix your face. Were you crying laughing or just crying? Both? Splash some cold water on your cheeks. That’s it. Now, go forth in peace with a new understanding of what it means to live and love.” —Garden & Gun "Reading The Crane Wife is a bit like following Hauser into the Mirror Maze, her voice as narrator guiding the way through and out. Whether writing about familial or cultural stories, each text becomes a mirror in which Hauser sees herself reflected back. And in her willingness to turn inward, to truly face herself, Hauser’s essays open outward, becoming themselves mirrors into which readers might gaze.” — Ploughshares "While it’s always difficult to summarize an essay collection, what holds The Crane Wife together is Hauser’s unpacking of emotional truths: who do we love, and why, and what happens when they’re gone? When we’re alone? When we forget what it was like to love them?” — Literary Hub "Hauser takes the reader along on a soulful journey of self-discovery as she brings together smart, astute observations on modern love and life...The essays in this volume offer a fascinating blend of relationships and breakups, colorful family stories, and cultural and literary influences. In fluid prose, she pursues more fulfilling ways to find happiness...What a pleasure it is be in the company of this writer. With clear eyes and an open heart, she finds her way and discovers that unmasking mistakes and vulnerabilities is one way of being strong.” — Minneapolis Star-Tribune “Hauser is excellent at capturing the weird, beautiful essence of life... The Crane Wife is full of fascinating, vividly drawn characters...Hauser’s writing has a genuine warmth and kindness that is entertaining and engaging in equal measure.” —New Republic “[ The Crane Wife ] explores love’s many forms with frank, raw honesty, charting an artful path through one woman’s experiences...Hauser’s wry, introspective investigation of her assumptions about love will likely free readers to examine their own personal narratives as well...‘The rare happy ending I appreciate is one that makes room for the whole painful fact of the world at the same time it offers the reader some joy,’ she writes. The Crane Wife embraces this philosophy again and again as Hauser excavates her past loves and losses, thoughtfully examines them and declares the pain of love to be worth the risk.” —BookPage "In The Crane Wife , Hauser undertakes a new way for her to tell stories from her life, playing with history and personal history, exploring the possible hidden truths in her family's past and her own. The result is like interconnected short stories but about her life, the person she is and was, maybe even the person she never knew herself to be. Funny, exciting, vulnerable — truly visionary." —Alexander Chee , author of Edinburgh and Queen of the Night " The Crane Wife is about is the power of stories: The ones we are told versus the ones we tell ourselves; how they shape and misshape our expectations; how those stories can both affirm our instincts and estrange us from our deepest yearnings, sometimes at the same time. CJ Hauser is an old soul with a fresh perspective and an energetic, wandering mind." — Jennifer Senior , author of All Joy and No Fun and former New York Times opinion columnist “Y’all. Read the whole thing. It’s damn good.” — Aminatou Sow , co-author of Big Friendship " The Crane Wife more than delivers on the immense promise of the viral essay that served as its source. My goodness is it funny, but also so devastatingly honest and bracing. Reading it is like taking a long road trip with your wisest, sharpest friend and talking the entire way." —R. Eric Thomas , author of Here for It "CJ Hauser's The Crane Wife is a masterful work of art that sets the high water mark for what an essay collection can accomplish. Hauser takes the big questions of her life—death, motherhood, heartbreak—and spins them into something totally unexpected and altogether sparkling. These essays will shatter your heart and then stitch it back together again." —Isaac Fitzgerald , author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts "About halfway through the collection, I started sending out you-have-to-read-this-book bat signals to friends. Yes, for the wit, yes, for the humor, but also the candidness, the self-awareness, the time it resembled not a book, but a mirror in which I briefly glimpsed myself...This is a book that understands me. This is a book that tickles the part of my brain that recalls who I wanted to be and considers how close or how far it is from who I am now. The writing is cunning, the perspective is refreshing, and it is deeply funny and true." — Lesley Nneka Arimah , author of What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky " The Crane Wife is brilliant and beautiful — the vulnerability of her viral essay is expanded to include immense humor, pondering and further misadventures of the heart. An absolute must-read. I will be gifting this book all year long." —Frances Cha , author of If I Had Your Face “In this perceptive and probing work, [Hauser] brilliantly parses the myths that shaped her understanding of love...A thrillingly original deconstruction of desire and its many configurations.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) “[A] lively, thoughtful, and often funny set of personal essays...[Hauser] makes a welcome effort to talk about both love and culture in unconventional ways...A smart, inviting, and candid clutch of self-assessments.” — Kirkus Reviews “[A] staccato, funny, barbed, metaphor-laced, and thought-provoking memoir-in-essays...[Hauser is] a threshing critic...No matter her focus, Hauser's deductions about human nature are always arresting, delving, fresh, and exhilarating.” — Book
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