I've listened to the Decemberists' What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World only three times so far, but I've heard various live versions of some of the songs because I've watched and listened to a lot of the radio station appearances that the Decemberists have been doing.
Last month, I realized something interesting about "The Wrong Year." After almost every couplet in the verses, there's a prominent part by an-other instrument. It's usually an electric twelve-string guitar part, but I think the absence of that twelve-string part is significant.
After "Could be that he’s into you / Could be that the obverse is true" there's an accordion part instead of the twelve-string part. The shift in instrumentation (from twelve-string guitar to accordion) sort of mirrors the "obverse" that the lyric mentions. Furthermore, the twelve-string is panned right, and the accordion is panned left, so there's a difference in positioning along with the difference in instrumentation.
After the first couplet in the third verse ("Sing me some eidolon / And I’ll sleep all the winter long"), there's just acoustic guitar and drums; there isn't an-other instrumental part from twelve-string guitar or accordion, which - like the lyrical mirroring of "obverse" - seems to represent the wintry hibernation. Where switching the twelve-string to accordion indicates the opposite, here the lack of any additional instrumental part helps to signify the inactivity of sleep.
[It's not exactly relevant, but while writing this post, I referenced the lyric video, and I noticed that the hyphens in "long-forgotten" are missing.]
