I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: August 25, 2022] The Decemberists

The Decemberists are one of our favorite bands and yet we have seen them very few times.  We were supposed to see them on their last tour but they cancelled our show because Colin lost his voice.

Then last year’s show was postponed for COVID.

Finally it was rescheduled.

We were on the left side of the stage, in front of Jenny Conlee.  I had a great view of her Leslie cabinet and speaker and it was really neat watching it spin faster and faster as the sound got bigger and wilder.

I used to love the earliest albums the most but I am now firmly in love with the Crane Wife and The Hazards of Love–two prog rock epics that rock to my heart’s contentment.  SO the fact that they started off with “The Crane Wife 3” (last time we saw them five years ago, the opened with all three parts) was pretty great.  But the fact that they followed with “The Island,: a roughly 12 minute epic that has some of the best rocking from the band was just spectacular.  We got to watch Jenny play the complicated keyboard riff and Colin sang his la las! I mean, I could have happily gone home right then.  And it was only the second song.

The followed with an old song “Shiny” from which he gets his Instagram handle: a dull and witless boy.  I liked that he tacked on a little bit of The Smiths at the end.

Then they played a brand new song: “Burial Ground.”  They haven’t released new music on four years, so it’s nice to see that they’re still makin new stuff (which means a likely tour in 2024, maybe).

This tour was more or less billed as a trip through their career, so they wound up playing pretty much one song per album.

It’s always great to hear “Calamity Song,” a jaunty number from The King is Dead which they followed with the mellow “Lake Song,” a lovely ballad from What a Terrible World…

Colin was up front, of course and he was very funny and a great frontman.  He has everyone wrapped around his finger pretty much from the moment he comes out, so that’s fun.

They do have a new album out since we last saw them (again, that missed 2018 show), so they played two songs from I’ll Be Your Girl.  “Sucker’s Prayer” and the super catchy “Severed” sandwiched my favorite moment of the night.

Because if “The Island” was magnificent (and long), I never expected them to also play “The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid.”  This song set from The Hazards of Love is only 7 minutes but it feels like its own epic. For this tune, they brought out Lizzie Ellison (who had been playing keys and banjo and a ton of other things all night) to sing the female vocals.  And she was awesome.

As was the rest of the band.  Chris Funk is an amazing guitar player who switches easily between instruments and plays terrific slide guitar in between ripping solos.  Nate Query switches between electric and upright bas with easy, often bowing the upright for the strings that are on their more orchestral songs.

And drummer John Moen, in addition to being a great drummer playing intricate patterns, also joined Jenny on keys at one point.  Jenny played accordion and John played keys during a quieter, drum-free section of one of the longer songs.

After a delightful “Down By the Water,” they played the two oldest songs of the set.  “16 Military Wives” which we’ve seen before and “I Was Meant for the Stage” which we haven’t.  I’m somewhat tickled that in our first ever show, they opened with The Singer Addresses His Audience, and now they’ve come full circle with “I Was Meant for the Stage.”  I’ve always liked this song and it was fun to “boo” Colin during the line “I was meant for derision.”

They ended the set fairly quickly (after about 75 minutes).  Last time, they played a super long song for an encore–the nearly 20 minute song cycle “The Tain.”  And followed it with yet another song.  So I assumed this would be a lengthy encore.

They played “Rusalka, Rusalka / Wild Rushes” the last song on the new album and the song that we don’t hear very much. I really like the second half, but the first part is a little slow.  It was more fun live, to be sure.

They ended with “Sons & Daughters” which I can’t believe we hadn’t seen live yet.  Colin had us singing along and had a vey funny comment about how the balcony was so far away that they were a few seconds behind in the call and response and that they really should try to respond before he was done.

And we left the theater singing “hear all the bombs fade away.

Even though I felt like I could have left after the first two songs, I was so satisfied, overall, the show felt pretty short.  It was about 90 minutes which is certainly a standard concert length, but after being delayed by two years it seemed like they might make the shows a little longer.

Regardless, it’s always great to see them.

When the 2020 show was announced, I managed to get fourth row center tickets.  I was SO EXCITED!  So to have this cancelled and then rescheduled meant that we got something like twelfth row off to the side.  Which was good, but nowhere near as good.  In the same way I feel like their planned 2020 tour “Twenty Years Before the Mast, The Decemberists’ 20th Anniversary Tour” promised something extra special and this concert was more just a really good show

With no expectations, I would have absolutely loved this concert, but with my expectations raised a little, it turned out to be great but not exceptional.  Which isn’t exactly fair either since they played a couple of my a favorite songs.  And it certainly doesn’t mean that I won’t be grabbing tickets immediately for their next tour.   Trying again for fourth row!

2015	2017	2022
The Singer Addresses His Audience ϖ	The Crane Wife 1 & 2 Ö	The Crane Wife 3 Ö
The Infanta ∏	The Crane Wife 3 Ö	The Island: Come and See/The Landlord’s Daughter/You’ll Not Feel the Drowning Ö
Calamity Song ⊗	Down By the Water ⊗	Shiny Š (With Rusholme Ruffians by The Smiths outro)
Rox in the Box ⊗	Shiny Š	Burial Ground [new]
Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect ©	We Both Go Down Together ∏	Calamity Song⊗
Make You Better ϖ	The Wrong Year ϖ	Lake Song ϖ
The Wrong Year ϖ	Make You Better ϖ	Sucker’s Prayer ⇒
Carolina Low ϖ	Red Right Ankle Ψ	The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid ♥
The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone) ♥	Lake Song  ϖ	Severed ⇒
A Bower Scene ♥	Everything is Awful ⇒	Down By the Water ⊗
Won’t Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga) ♥	We All Die Young ⇒	16 Military Wives ∏
The Rake’s Song ♥	The Abduction of Margaret ♥	I Was Meant for the Stage Ψ
The Crane Wife 1 & 2 Ö	The Queen’s Rebuke / The Crossing ♥	Encore
The Crane Wife 3 Ö	O Valencia! Ö	Rusalka, Rusalka / Wild Rushes ⇒
Down by the Water ⊗	The Chimbley Sweep Ψ	Sons & Daughters Ö
16 Military Wives ∏	encore
O Valencia! Ö	The Tain ¥
A Beginning Song ϖ	encore 2
encore	June Hymn ⊗
12/17/12 ϖ
The Mariner’s Revenge Song ∏