"Under the Boughs Unbowed..."

I drove out to Boston last weekend to see a concert Saturday night at the Orpheum Theater with mi hermano, a band called The Decemberists, who hail from Portland, OR. I discovered them a year and a half ago, following the release of their third album Picaresque, and one of my first blog postings ever was a review of that record, which I believe I described as sounding rather like "pirate folk music" or "if Herman Melville fronted Fairport Convention." Singer/songwriter Colin Meloy's songs are mini-stories (he has a degree in creative writing from some school or other), typically involving doomed lovers or watery deaths, often both. It's a very literate (and literary) style of songwriting that does tend to send the listener running for the dictionary every once in a while ("the curlews carved their arabesques," for example...but "soft as fontanel"? Oh, ick...). Musically, it can be very challenging and eclectic and I have grown to like them rather a lot, and have acquired just about their full discography (which includes only four albums, two EPs, and the odd single).

Anyway, they have a new record out called The Crane Wife (no, not Lilith), with a three-part title track based on a Japanese folk story of the same name...an object lesson about love and greed and all the stuff that makes for a good, rousing folk story. It's a much darker record than Picaresque, with none of the whimsical light-hearted songs like "The Sporting Life," which isn't necessarily a bad thing. In many ways, it hearkens back to their first album, Castaways and Cutouts, which is also a bit on the dark side. It took me a few listens on the drive to and from a Syracuse football game to really get into it (and erase the memory of the wretched performance of the football team--"The Sporting Life" indeed...) and it's one of those records that take a few spins to unlock its charms, but once you do, it becomes a top favorite.

Interestingly, they've expanded their sonic palette by incorporating bits of 1970s progressive rock (at one point they seem to channel Emerson, Lake, and Palmer--but, hey, I like Emerson, Lake, and Palmer). Actually, bits of the new album (especially the 12-minute song suite "The Island") remind me of Thick As a Brick/A Passion Play-era Jethro Tull (1972/73), where they mixed classic English and Celtic folk elements with blues and put it all in a progressive rock context. It's not everyone's cup of tea, but it's one I drink down with great relish. Anyway, I must have listened to The Crane Wife about 100 times by now and I still can't get enough of it it (that and Robyn Hitchcock's Olé Tarantula, about which more after I see him in concert in two weeks...).

In concert, The Decemberists are wonderful. There are five regular bandmembers (who are all multinstrumentalists), and they were augmented by an additional violinist/keyboardist who, in that typical "augmented bandmember" way, didn't always have something to do, so at times just kind of stood there looking awkward--or worse, digging out the dreaded tambourine. My brother and I were often challenged by identifying just what it was that lead guitarist Chris Funk was playing--at one point, he had something that was played by turning a metal crank--it kind of looked like a Gatling gun. The credits to the new album indicate that he plays something called a hurdy-gurdy (and it looks like what I would imagine something called a hurdy-gurdy would look like--and Wikipedia confirms my suspicion). They also did an on-the-spot recreation of the Boston Massacre, which we had a hard time seeing from our rather distant vantage point.

Anyway, it was a terrific show and if they ever come to your neck of the woods, do try to check them out. One thing that took me completely by surprise, through, was the crowd--I was (and I am not exaggerating) the oldest person there, and by at least 15-20 years. My brother teased me about this, until I had to point out that, at only four years my junior, he was the second oldest person there. At first, we thought they were college students (I can see how The Decemberists would appeal to English majors, much like Elvis Costello was required listening among English majors back when I was one in the 1980s), but it soon dawned on us that most of them were high school kids. Maybe I underestimate the youth of today, but I really have no idea why this band would appeal to teenagers (the bandmembers themselves are only a couple years younger than me)--and the crowd really went for the obscure stuff, too. On the plus side, there was no line to get beer.... But I have to say, they were probably the best behaved rock audience I've ever seen, certainly better behaved than crowds were when I was their age.

Anyway, for those who are interested, here is a link to a Boston Globe interview with Meloy, published the day of the concert and a positive review of the show published today.

For the record, here is a set list (more or less in order, near as I can remember):

The Crane Wife 1 and 2
The Crane Wife 3
We Both Go Down Together
The Engine Driver
Yankee Bayonet (I Will be Home Then)
The Perfect Crime #2
Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect
O Valencia!
July, July!
Shankill Butchers
The Island (Come and See/The Landlord’s Daughter/You’ll Not Feel the Drowning)
16 Military Wives
Sons and Daughters

Encore:
Red Right Ankle
A Cautionary Song
(unidentified song)