Colin Meloy: The Decemberists

To Manchester’s rather lovely Albert Hall tonight to see my favourite band. Forsooth, The Decemberists are in town!

My love for this Portland, Oregon-based band knows no limits and it’s always a joy to see them. Not only do they serve up exactly the blend of literate indie-folk-pop-prog (now with just a hint of added electronica) designed to float my particular seafaring vessel, but they can be relied upon to deliver a humdinger of a live performance too!

Front-person, songwriter, guitarist, author and wit, Colin Meloy is a genial and engaging presence and involves the adoring crowd right from the get-go, conducting massed 3-part harmony singing on ‘Billy Liar’ and keeping us in the palm of his hand right through to the traditional encore of ‘The Mariner’s Revenge Song’, which sees the entire band larking about on stage whilst an inflatable whale ‘swims’ above the audience.

Thanks to Colin, Jenny, Nate, Chris and John - consummate musicians and lovely human beings, all - for another great gig and for all the enjoyment they’ve given me over the years. Thanks, too, to long-time touring member Kelly Hogan who gave a mesmerising vocal performance on ‘The Queen’s Rebuke’.

I left the gig with a huge grin on my face and one of Colin Meloy’s guitar picks in my pocket, courtesy of my pal Mel, who snaffled it when it was thrown into the crowd!

The set list, should you be interested, was as follows:

Don’t Carry It All
Billy Liar
Sucker’s Prayer
Make You Better
Cutting Stone
Calamity Song
The Sporting Life
The Crane Wife 1 & 2
The Queen’s Rebuke / The Crossing
Tripping Along
Severed
We All Die Young
Ben Franklin’s Song
O Valencia!
Once In My Life
Rusalka, Rusalka / The Wild Rushes
The Mariner’s Revenge Song

They didn’t play ‘The Soldiering Life’ tonight but, a day after the centenary of the ending of World War 1, it seems appropriate to link to it here. So, here’s a performance from back in 2005 https://youtube.com/watch?v=a99SmtnDbUQ

And here’s a song that they did play tonight. From their current album, ‘I’ll Be Your Girl’, here’s ‘Sucker’s Prayer’ https://youtube.com/watch?v=B369SWSNo3U