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The Decemberists’ new album tops Billboard

January 26th, 2011

Following in the footsteps of bands like Modest Mouse, The Shins, Death Cab For Cutie and Vampire Weekend, The Decemberists have become the latest “indie” band to top the Billboard album charts.

The Portland, OR band’s sixth album, The King Is Dead, beat out stiff competition from, ahem, Kidz Bop 19, to reach the #1 spot with an impressive 93,567 copies sold last week. This is a remarkable improvement over their last album, 2009′s The Hazards of Love, which sold one-fifth as many copies in its first week.

Whether this is a testament to the band’s growing audience or just a reaction to their shift away from their tangent-heavy prog towards a rootsier, alt-country sound is unclear, but still, it says a lot that a band once signed to Kill Rock Stars has the sway to be a chart topper.

It should also be noted that the band also performed well on the Canadian charts, coming in at #4 behind Bruno Mars, Pearl Jam and Rihanna, though only with a depressing 3619 copies sold.

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Posted on Wednesday, January 26th, 2011 at 12:06 pm by and is filed under Blog, News, The Wedge.

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