Youth and Beauty Brigade: Decemberists Make Welcome Return to West Coast

Words and Photographs by Luke Pimentel, Editor

November 30, 2008

Tuesday, November 25th, San Francisco. Even though it’s early in the week, the mood in the city is bright.  The streets are still awash in the giddy afterglow of Obama victory parties, and the prospect of Thanksgiving holiday is fresh on the horizon.

I’m at the side of the stage, watching The Decemberists deliver a knockout set for a sold-out audience in one of the city’s finest venues. An ornate building sandwiched somewhere between a club and a vintage movie palace, The Warfield’s mix of the contemporary and the elegant is a perfect match for the band’s equally contemporary and elegant brand of retro fusion rock.

Everyone is locked into the Talking Heads thump of “The Perfect Crime 2″off the band’s terrific 2006 release The Crane Wife – and up on stage, lead singer/songwriter Colin Meloy is orchestrating a clapalong.  No, I mean really orchestrating; instead of the usual 4/4 marching band beat, the crowd has been broken into four groups, each of which has been instructed to clap a separate rhythm.  As the band brings the music down, the theater is filled with a symphony of complex, syncopated hand percussion.

“Watch your tempos,” Meloy says with an impish grin, as the different groups struggle to keep in unison.

Colin Meloy of The Decemberists.

Who would’ve thought something as comfortably predictable as the concert clapalong could get so elephantine in scope?

I suppose anything is possible in the hands of The Decemberists, a band whom, with the help of such innovative stylings, has evolved into one of the most vibrant and beloved live acts in rock.

The Portland, Oregon-based quintet has devoted its performances to taking the hoary cliches of the concert experience and turning them into something bordering on interactive performance art.  It’s an ambition that dovetails perfectly with the modus operandi of its music, a pastiche of playful pageantry that thrives on flowery wordplay, ancient mythological cycles, obscure folk tales, and a serious fetish for centuries-old frippery.  (Hell, even my prose gets all pedantic just writing about them.)

Meloy – a mercurial marvel of intelligent and mischievous charisma (there I go again!) – is the obvious catalyst for this live energy. At the Warfield, the clapalong bit was just one of maybe half a dozen elaborate pieces of call-and-response between band and audience, for which Meloy acted as a sort of conductor.

Other times Meloy was a show unto himself; his freewheeling barrage of movement found him bear-hugging security guards, engaging in fast-paced Russian kickstep dancing, and, in one case, diving into the audience, grabbing someone’s cell phone, and treating a random person on the phone list to vocals from the B-side “Culling of the Fold”.  (Suddenly, The Mars Volta’s Cedric Bixler-Zavala is starting to look like a real slacker.)

The antics might have seemed a bit much had Meloy not been buoyed by his skilled, tasteful, and comparatively reserved bandmates.

Jenny Conlee of The Decemberists.

Jenny Conlee formed the core of the band’s unconventional sound with accordion, Wurlitzer organ, and Nord Electro keys.  Nate Query spent equal time on electric bass and cello, while percussionist John Moen did his best to harmonize with Meloy’s distinctive Celtic croon.  Chris Funk filled the gaps with mandolin, hurdy gurdy, and a seemingly endless cavalcade of Every Other Musical Instrument Ever Invented.

Such an eclectic mix of sounds might go far in convincing listeners that The Decemberists are indeed the prog-rock band every music journalist in the known universe is hellbent on convincing us they are.  However, if such is true, they are probably the most restrained proggers ever, at least from a musical standpoint.  Even at their most epic – such as on the four-part suite “The Island”, or the languid, Floydian mood piece “California One/Youth and Beauty Brigade”, off debut LP Castaways and Cutouts – the songwriting is always hook-driven and rarely, if ever, loses sight of itself.

Early in the show, Meloy referred to San Francisco as the band’s “second home”, and the band played as if that statement were true, stacking the setlist with lesser-known tunes like “Dracula’s Daughter” and “Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect”, as well as the aforementioned “California One”, which received a lovely, transfixing read during the single encore, and showcased Mr. Funk’s considerable prowess on the pedal steel guitar.

Chris Funk of The Decemberists.

In between, the band sprinkled tunes off of its latest release, “Always the Bridesmaid:  A Singles Series” (punny!), highlighted by the hilarious satire of “Valerie Plame”, mournful “Record Year for Rainfall”, and the Belle and Sebastian soundalike “Days of Elaine”.

As extra credit, Meloy teased the crowd with news of the band’s forthcoming album, The Hazards of Love, drawing huge cheers with the simple statement, “The final of our new record is somewhere here in San Francisco, sitting in a hotel desk. It comes out in March.”  (The evening’s intro music – the ominous strains of Wendy Carlos’s main theme from The Shining – hinted at a possible influence on the direction of the new material.)

The band then sent everyone home happy with a crazy-wonderful rendition of “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” – off of 2005′s Picaresque – which found the band collapsing to the floor in mock agony, while Funk clambered up and down the edge of the stage, directing the audience to scream as though they were being collectively swallowed by a giant whale.

There’s nothing quite like 2300 people caterwauling at the top of their lungs to tell you you’re watching one of the year’s best live shows.

For more images, click the thumbnails below:

“Always the Bridesmaid: A Singles Series” is currently available for download via iTunes.  For more information on The Decemberists, please visit www.decemberists.com.