The Decemberists
Bimbo’s 365 Club, San Francisco (March 22, 2005)
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The Decemberists
Bimbo’s 365 Club, San Francisco
March 22, 2005 |
It turns out the Decemberists had reasons to be wound up that night. Their third full album, Picaresque, hit stores that day, and less than a week before, a trailer carrying their equipment and merchandise had been stolen outside of Portland. Their trailer and t-shirts for sale (and, sadly, their sailor outfits) had been recovered, though as of the San Francisco show, they were still missing thousands of dollars of instruments.
Perhaps the band had only borrowed or hocked hammer dulcimers, accordions, double basses, violins, guitars, keyboards, etc., but if they were a few instruments short of their usual menagerie, no one was the wiser. The sound was full and energetic, and right to the very end, the band kept busting out new noise-makers like hurdy-gurdies, giant tambourines, and little keyboards that they held up to a microphone and blew into.
The show was split rather evenly between tracks off the new album and old standbys, though the crowd seemed to know each equally well (curse that darned internet). Meloy’s twelve-string guitar and theatrical lyrics sung in a powerfully nasal voice formed the backbone of each song, his every line an exercise in vocal dexterity. Take this tongue-twister, from “July, July”: “And I'll say your camisole was sprightly light magenta / When in fact it was a nappy bluish grey.” Or this set of alliterations, from “The Bagman’s Gambit”: “Purloined in Petrograd, they were suspicious of where your loyalties lay / So I paid off a bureaucrat to convince your captors there to secret you away.” Mouthfuls, to be sure, these lines raised the bar for hopeful sing-alongers in the audience.
Though the band kept coming back to self-described “dirges”, the best moments were the up-tempo songs that forced them to be at their theatrical and enthusiastic best, as with the hopeful-sounding “Los Angeles, I’m Yours,” and the echoes of “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da” in “Billy Liar”. It was a show, too, that kept getting better as it went on. The big accordion polka “The Mariner’s Revenge Song” had the whole crowd stomping and dancing – as much as cool indie-rock kids can dance – to close the first and only set.
Knowing they had something good going, the band didn’t take long to return for the encore. Meloy strapped on an electric guitar for the first time all night, and they launched into the positively rocking, five-part “The Tain.” It seemed a strange choice to change the tone of the music for the encore, but the dark and nasty rock opera closed the night with a bang. “The Tain” migrated from a spare hard-rock riff to soft harmonies by violinist Petra Haden and keyboardist Jenny Conlee and finally to full-on rocking splendor, telling a fable of blood and sex and witches. All in all, a fitting end to a night at the pop circus.
JEFF GRAY | Jeff Gray used to be an important mover and shaker in Chicago, but gave all that up to live on a beach in rural Hawaii. You'll notice him if you're there, he's the one who's very tall and a little bit sunburned. His musical tastes tend towards the mainstream -- Phish, Radiohead, The Strokes -- but he'll argue to the death that those bands are mainstream because they're 100% awesome. Jeff's always on the lookout for the next great pop song, tidbits about Michigan football, and 80's action movies on cable.