O, Colin Meloy! How your cherubic visage and reedy vox rather astoundingly do not stoke within me a zealous ardor to curl the fingers of mine hand into a mightie ball and hurl it with an urgencie most awesome and terrible straight at the furry vortex from whence issues your sugar-dusted melodies and capricious rhymes!
Meloy, you probably already know, is the Decemberist-in-Chief, and in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, if ever there was a band that going purely on the math I should hate, this is it. The quavering, nigh-sycophantic Anglophilia. The smugness. The fact that Meloy doesn’t just sing in a wilfully archaic and orotund argot; he talks that way, too. But the cat is such a versatile songwriter, and the quintet’s live performances are so joyfully self-deprecating, I just can’t quit them, any more than I can stop keeping and meticulously labeling jars of my own urine. Ha! Totally kidding! (About the urine.)
When last we saw our heroes at Merriweather Post Pavilion, two years ago, they played their rock-opera Hazards of Love album in sequence and in its entirety before going on to offer a smattering of tunes from earlier records. Ballsy, but they sold it. Serendipitously scheduled for the region’s most lovely and temperate evening in weeks, Monday night’s Merriweather gig was only slightly less militant about promoting their latest songs. The King Is Dead, the R.E.M.-indebted, agreeably country-inflected album the group released in January, accounted for almost half the 105-minute set, spearheaded by a hard-charging “July, July”. The 20-song program repeated only four from their prior visit. Admirable!
Meloy had been watching the Republican presidential debate backstage, and he volunteered “The Calamity Song” to the Michele Bachmann campaign free of charge. “The Bagman’s Gambit”, a mini-epic of espionage and seduction, might’ve been chosen for its Washington setting. Vivid and mournful, it was an early highlight.
Regular Decemberist Jenny Conlee was absent, said Meloy, due to ongoing cancer treatment. Meanwhile, singer and violinist Sara Watkins, who’d already joined the tour prior to Conlee’s diagnosis, provided a welcome and powerful vocal and visual foil for Meloy. On “All Arise”, her fiddle brought such a whiskey-soaked sway to the tune that I found myself hoping they’d cover “Honky Tonk Women”. (Hey, they played Heart’s “Crazy on You” last time they were here.)
It wasn’t to be, but the thrilling encore set — framed by The King Is Dead‘s two hymns, “January” and “June” — included a disarming take on the Fruit Bats’ “When U Love Somebody“, and then a “The Chimbley Sweep”, dedicated without comment to Rick Santorum. Leave it to Meloy to tell a dirty joke without deigning to utter a dirty word.
But whoa, the song titles in this setlist!
July, July
Down by the Water
Calamity Song
Rise to Me
The Bagman’s Gambit
Annan Water
Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga) — Sara Watkins lead vocal
The Crane Wife 3
Don’t Carry It All
All Arise!
The Rake’s Song
Rox in the Box
O Valencia!
The Perfect Crime #2
This Is Why We Fight
Encore 1:
January Hymn
When U Love Somebody — Fruit Bats cover
The Chimbley Sweep
Eli, the Barrow Boy
Encore 2:
June Hymn
