Review: The Decemberists

Hammerstein Ballroom, 3 November 2006

(photos pilfered from Alex Wolinetz & Tammy Lo)

WOW! Where did all those people come from. Seems like only yesterday that I got a "you'd really dig the Decemberists" vibe from a couple trustworthy tastemakers and hit 'em up blind at the Mercury Lounge. That show was crowded, certainly not sold out; I was sold on 'em about a song into the set and easily made my way to the stage to get a better gander at who was making me smile like that. To say that the music I heard that night filled a niche would be an understatement, more like crammed into a nook, stashed in a cave -- it didn't come to you, you had to brave the stalagmites to find the "it" that made the Decemberists so appealing.

Almost exactly three years and a couple near-perfect full-length releases later I found myself struggling to find a ticket for their CMJ-week show at Hammerstein Ballroom (yes, two trips to one of the worst rooms in the city in one week, masochistic, I know). They'd made it, crossed the threshold of niche in every direction, blew up the cave and hit the mainstream. Friday night made it clear why.

The set started promptly at 9pm with "Crane Wife 3" just like their brand spankin' new album of same name does. Colin Meloy, the spearhead of the operation, the brain trust, good boy/bad boy of the band, ensured that all attention was focused on him from note one. He was playing a lute-like thing (bouzouki?) but he acted like he was playing Eddie Van Halen's red and white striped guitar as he preened in front of the audience, walking right up to the lip of the stage and leaning out into the crowd like a hair-band sex god. It was a strange sight, but perfectly encapsulated Meloy's stage presence -- heavy metal lute.


"Crane Wife" is a brilliant tune, as most of the tracks on the album are, and most of them were played Friday night. In fact, the next song followed the track listings as they launched into the "The Island," an absolute raging suite, one of two "major" tunes from the album. Here is where you started to see how this band has stretched its big crane wings made themselves much more than that appealing-but-limited literatipop. The Island is a masterpiece of tone shifts, of big sounds -- it's old, fat, prog rock of the best type. Deep into the tune, Jenny Conlee rips into an organ solo that would make Keith Emerson jealous -- "The Island" is, no doubt, a song ELP wished they had written.

Even as good as the music was, it seemed lacking at first. Part of this was that Meloy's vocals were a bit shaky and he dropped a few verses here and there. Meloy's voice is the type that probably shouldn't be appealing -- he reminds me of the nasally Dave Foley -- but he somehow pulls it off. Part of that shakiness was probably due to the fact that he was honestly overwhelmed by the crowd. He even referenced the old Mercury Lounge gigs and made a couple comments like "Hammerstein Ballroom!" although he said it like there should be a "fucking" in the middle there and picture an absolutely flabbergasted look on the guy's face. It didn't take too long for him to settle in, though, and the set got stronger and stronger.

So did the crowd. I tell you, I haven't been that impressed with an audience in a while and Meloy played them like a master craftsman. He took band/audience interaction to wonderful places, somehow making general participation tedium a lot of fun. The normal indie pop crowd is too hip for sing-a-longs and impromptu dance contests, but Colin had no trouble getting these hipsters to shed their irony and isolation and just have fun. Part of this might have been an infusion of out-of-towners for CMJ, but still, NYU doesn't hold the patent on disaffected youth. And it was amazing how into it the crowd was, this wasn't a "hey, it's Friday night, let's go check out the Decemberists" bunch; it was more like a "we know every song to the entire catalog and can sing along to 'Red Right Ankle'" kind.

The Decemberists aren't the kind of band that stretch things out, that improvise or jam. If you told me that they played the same exact set every night down to the intersong banter, I wouldn't be surprised. Even so, they are a fantastic live band, although the reasons why are tough to put your finger on. Part of it is Meloy's presence. I honestly believe he may be the making of a David Byrne-type... this thought came to me during that, coincidentally Talking-Head-ish "Perfect Crime" when he started flailing about and writhing on the floor while playing sharp-angled guitar chords.

Of course, this is not "the Colin Meloy Band" and the band is equally impressive. I would put the collective in the pretty-good-at-lots-of-things circle and not the bloody-brilliant-at-one-thing camp. It's cliche as all hell, but there is a lot of instrument changing for pretty much everyone on stage. Yeah, everyone does it, but I am a sucker for it anyway and the Decemberists are as deft as anyone at finding just the right combination of instruments for each song, or even each part of a song. So at one moment, there's a a glockenspiel, an accordion, an upright bass and a sweetly-plucked acoustic guitar urging a beautiful melody from the stage and the next it's back to a more traditional rock and rolling with electric guitars, bass and organ. At one point a rock band quite literally transformed into a string quartet behind Meloy's vocals and guitar. Violins, banjos, pedal steel, cello, Moog all have their place in the Decemberists canon and each arrangement breathes life into what could easily be just a set of clever poetry and stories by a third-rate English major. But the important thing is that it's not. Watching the Decemberists onstage, the whole experience, is undoubtedly art of the most enjoyable kind.

I don't have a complete setlist, but, like I said, they played nearly everything off "The Crane Wife" -- Yankee Bayonet was probably the weakest of the bunch, not translating too well to the stage; O Valencia! was fantastic high-energy stuff; Shankill Butchers was where Meloy's vocals really tightened up, a quiet, sparse string-heavy, absolutely gorgeous rendition, the Crane Wife 1 & 2 suite was perfectly played, with multiple mid-song instrument changes that couldn't have been any more smooth. In addition, there was one track that didn't make the album -- "The Cutting of the Boy" which Colin said might have been "too violent" for the masses. Personally, I just thought the song was cutting-room-floor-worthy, but Meloy brought a whole slew of stomping 'cross the stage energy to it. I think it was during this song that he added some more of his brilliant interactive wit, mocking the masses of cell-phone-cameras poking in the air
mid-exposure by grabbing someone's phone and singing into it and holding it up as if photographing the crowd.

A nice number of songs from the other albums rounded out the 2 hours of white tower goodness including We Both Go Down Together, Song for Myla Goldberg, and 16 Military Wives which may be the best Iraq-era anti-war screed on the market today. He prefaced this with a little "everyone go vote on Tuesday" type rap saying it didn't matter who you voted for, etc but of course, this was said with a wink as he said "this is a song about what happens when you don't vote!" Good stuff.

Here's a nice video of the sing-along during Military Wives:



The last tune of the encore was "I Was Meant for the Stage" which is the kind of song that starts with voice and guitar and kind of builds and builds, each instrument adding a little weight each go-around until it finally sort of explodes in complete cacophony. Here everyone kind of continued to make noise as they sort of sprawled out on the stage, Meloy finally rising to basically run over the drum kit. For that moment, the Decemberists were the Who, but the night proved that they can be whoever they want to be and do it well. I just want to know what room they'll be playing in next time they come through town.

If you're still reading, quick note about the opener: Alasdair Roberts. Hailing from Glasgow, this guy sang with the thickest brogue you could imagine. It was him on acoustic guitar/vocals and a traditional 2-man rhythm section of Chicagoans behind him. Roberts had a real gawkiness to him, long thin limbs stretching from quite possibly the widest, squarest shoulders I have ever seen on a man that slight. The appearance fit the music. The songs were like Scotch-folk-infused singer/songwriter pop. Very slow-moving, quiet stuff that I would love to see in a cozy room like The Living Room. He had trouble holding the attention of the crowd despite some really nice songs -- the kind of verse-by-verse-by-verse storytelling that just as easily fit in between battels in "Braveheart" as it would in a pub in Glasgow. One tune in particular, introduced as a "drinking song," had a wonderfully incongruous pair of rhythms between the drums and guitar. Roberts was deft as could be finger-picking his guitar, elliciting melody and rhythm out of his guitar with what seemed like no motion at all. Definitely recommended if he's playing in a coffee
house near you.