A rainy mood comes over the Decemberists on the PDX bookish guitar-pop posse's Always the Bridesmaid: A Singles Series, Volume III, due out early next month. The latest single is "Record Year" b/w "Raincoat Song", both unassumingly graceful, melancholic tracks on first couple of listens. "Record Year", the longer of the two, allows Colin Meloy's lilting tale of loneliness amid a "record year for rainfall" to drizzle down across acoustic strums, banjo, and strings. "I've got a temper set for tender/ And you were shrugging it off, like a feather/ Saying, 'Oh... would you look at this weather?'" Meloy sings, just before the song expands to encompass a graying empire. So it's not "Valerie Plame", but it's from the same gloomy pre-hope realm. [from Always the Bridesmaid: A Singles Series, Volume III; due 12/02/08 on on Capitol/Y.A.B.B. Records/Jealous Butcher/Rough Trade]