Though Colin Meloy is both a singer and a songwriter, he does not consider himself a singer-songwriter.

"It's the image of a singer-songwriter that bothers me, I guess," said Meloy, the frontman for the Decemberists. "That whole idea of somebody with an acoustic guitar pouring their heart out never interested me. Those aren't the kind of songs I want to write."

Meloy finds inspiration for songs beyond his own emotional state. He likes to base songs on Japanese folk tales and stories about a gang of Irish Protestants that once prowled the streets of Belfast looking for Catholics to kill.

It's telling that Meloy cites a fairly obscure song by Robyn Hitchcock, "The Ghost Ship," as a major influence on his songwriting.

"That song tells an amazing story and is a tremendous feat of imagination," Meloy said. "It showed me that a song can be about anything."

Meloy will lead the Decemberists, an ambitious indie rock band that recently made the jump to a major label, into Grantham's Messiah College for a Saturday night show.

The quintet (guitarist and singer Meloy; multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk; keyboardist Jenny Conlee; upright bassist Nate Query; and drummer John Moen) is touring in support of "The Crane Wife" (2006), its most recent album and its first for Capitol Records.

Meloy said moving to a major label after making three albums — "Castaways and Cutouts" (2002), "Her Majesty" (2003) and "Picaresque" (2005) — for the independent label Kill Rock Stars really didn't have much impact on the band.

"They signed us because of who we are and what we've done," he said. "There wasn't any effort to change us. That wouldn't make sense."

"The Crane Wife," a Japanese folk tale, inspired Meloy to write "The Crane Wife, Pt. 3," which leads off the album, and "The Crane Wife, Pts 1 & 2," which stretches for more than 10 minutes. The album also includes "Shankill Butchers," a real Belfast gang that later became bogeymen for a generation of Irish children.

"The Crane Wife" is not a concept album in the tradition of records like the Who's "Tommy" or Pink Floyd's "The Wall," but it does hang together thematically and musically.

It's an album in the truest sense of the word — a collection of 10 songs meant to be experienced as a whole.

"I love albums," said Meloy, who grew up in Montana and now lives in Portland, Ore., where the band is based. "That's how I grew up listening to music — sitting in front of the speakers for long stretches and looking at the artwork and reading the lyrics. I don't know what to think when I keep reading about the imminent demise of the album."

Though "The Crane Wife" is thematically and musically complex, it never sounds labored or forced. Its themes are definitely on the dark side, but the music is remarkably light.

"That's a common device in pop music," Meloy said. "It increases tension."

There's little Meloy would change about the album if he could go back and tinker with it, but he does wish it was shorter. "The Crane Wife" clocks in at more than 60 minutes."

"I think an album should be about 45 minutes," he said. "We went back to see if we could cut it, but we just didn't think we could remove any of the songs. It didn't help that two of them are more than 10 minutes long."

Though it might be a tad long, anybody who buys the album is advised to stick with it all the way to end. The closing track, "Sons and Daughters," is a wonderful piece of pop songcraft that closes "The Crane Wife" on an uplifting, joyful note.

"That's the first song I ever wrote on a bouzouki (a mandolin-like instrument found in Greece)," Meloy said. "It probably helped the song that I only knew two chords."

The Decemberists, with My Brightest Diamond, 8 p.m., Brubaker Auditorium, Messiah College, Grantham, $15, 1-800-594-8499.

E-mail: jferguson@lnpnews.com