Are you familiar with the album The Crane Wife by the Decemberists? The local radio station was playing the last track (”Sons and Daughters”) a lot last year, and I really liked it, so I picked up the album. The song sounded as if it were something by Neutral Milk Hotel, who haven’t yet really followed up on their amazing 1998 release In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, which at this point is almost a decade old.



The Crane Wife has a number of great tracks in addition to that last one. I was struck however, by a certain similarity between track 6 on the album and a tune by Led Zeppelin. The song by the Decemberists in question is called “When The War Came,” and it reminds me of “No Quarter,” which is the penultimate track on the Led Zeppelin album Houses Of The Holy. Here are some excerpts from each song, along with a mash-up of the two that I have created to help make the similarities more obvious (listen with headphones to best appreciate the mash-up since the songs are in separate channels):

		The Decemberists: “When The War Came”
		Led Zeppelin: “No Quarter”
		Mash-up of “When The War Came” and “No Quarter”

I could make the mash-up tighter, but it is mostly there to demonstrate the relationship between the two songs. For one, that opening melodic phrase is very recognizable: it outlines ^5-^b7-^1-^2. The ending on that ninth in the first and third phrase of each song is uncanny, I think. As well, the main riff in the Zeppelin song happens during a toggle between the tonic and subdominant chords, which are the main chords in the pre-chorus of the Decemberists’s tune. Finally, the move to bVI in the chorus of “When The War Came” seems to match the move to bVI in “No Quarter” right before the riff comes in. So the order of these corresponding parts is not necessarily the same, and the Decemberists have some more complex metrical stuff happening, but there are more similarities I think than can be ignored.

I suppose I don’t have any more of a theoretical point to make with this post than merely to show the strange resemblance between the two songs. I do wonder, however, whether the Decemberists recognized this resemblance, and/or whether the Decemberists were consciously, unconsciously, or in no way evoking the Led Zeppelin song. On some level, there are only a limited number of chords, melodic shapes, formal devices, etc. that any songwriter deals with. Particularly with popular music, where many stock items get used again and again, it seems possible that multiple bands may unwittingly create end products that are very much the same.

Where does one draw the line, then, when deciding what is derivative and what is original? On some level, isn’t everything derivative? The irony, of course, is that Led Zeppelin is known for reworking numerous riffs and tunes by other artists. Honestly, I often write songs after being inspired by some new riff, new form, or new whatever that I’ve just heard. The new song is thus a blend of everything I previously knew plus this new musical technique. Sometimes the artifacts of this newly-learned trick are more evident than others. Are the seams therefore showing in the musical fabric of “When The War Came?”