These people are anti-pop. Hard to resist the tempting idea that it mighht be both fun and instructive to strap Simon Cowell firmly into a chair at the front and force him to watch the entire gig... Defiantly, they opened by performing the recent folk-rock operetta - Harzards of Love, in it's entirety, from start to finish, without so much as a hello. Obstinately imaginative, like the nerdy kid in your class who refused to write in anything but green pen, they will clearly do things their way or not at all. Ok, perhaps it was more to do with me standing in an unadvantageous position toward the back, but the set never totally convinced. It's a difficult thing to pull off a complete thematic suite in modern music, particularly if you're disavowing the singalong chorus. Still it's a strong, immensely ambitious work, amply crafted with variations in tone and power, shifting between three lead vocalists, covering a bagful of musical bases, from sea shanty to heavy-end blues - if you're prepared to pay attention it richly rewards. Centrepiece is the apocalyptic folk of "The Rake Song", but the piece as a whole builds in momentum, and the overarching theme "Harzards of Love" is interwoven throughout. Closing, are the triumphant "The Wanting Comes in Waves" and the final melancholic farewell ballad, the 4th part of "The Hazards Of Love 4 (The Drowned)".
Like the proverbial game, the second half was markedly different to the first. Working now through their back catalogue and playing the (relative) hits. Their sound is an amalgam firstly of Old European folk - iconified not just by the instruments - mandolin and accordion, but also by the close harmony singing, but secondly by new world indie punk. There are echoes of the Pixies and Violent Femmes, and one can imagine Jack and Meg White would feel right at home at a Decemberists' family singalong. But it all lies firmly on a bedrock of apparently Irish traditional folk, as if perhaps they're emigrant decendants of the Pogues.
Lead singer and general lightning rod, Colin Meloy has a strong, simple, melodic tenor that would cut acoustically through any pub full of noisy revellers on either side of the Atlantic. He also has a finely tuned sense of comic timing and this was engaged in hilariously conducting a mass singalong, appropriating a blow up killer whale as prop and a bandmate as fall guy, and gently lambasting the locals for foolishly naming the area after a dodgy pub in Oregon - the tongue in cheek American-ism bowling over the gleeful audience. My musical star of the team though was the accordian and general everything-player Jenny Conlee.
Stand out for me overall is the excellent "The Mariners Song", spine-tingling-ly evocative and beautifully weighted.
No comments:
Post a Comment