 "Photo: Courtney Coloumbe")
 "Photo: Courtney Coloumbe")
 "Photo: Courtney Coloumbe")
Since 2006 The Decemberists had been gaining speed with their successful major label debut, The Crane Wife. The band soon saw their fan base boom with the success of their single "O Valencia!," a green screen music video challenge, and a friendly on-air feud with Stephen Colbert. With this new abundance in popularity the Decemberists embarked on nearly a full year of touring, managing to sell out large clubs and theaters. Finally in late 2007, the band decided to wrap up their year of tours with a concept tour of epic proportions: The Long of It and Short of It Tour, where the band would spend two nights in each city playing songs over eight minutes in length on the first night and on the second night playing all of the shorter songs in their repertoire. By far this tour was the best thing the band had conceived in quite a long time, but one city into the tour, tragedy struck: a member of the band (whose name was never released) fell seriously ill, and the remainder of the tour was canceled.
Naturally the cancellation of such an epic tour left many fans (including myself) in a sort of Decemberists funk. Luckily, front-man Colin Meloy has recently stepped up to get Decemberists' fans back on their feet. In early 2008 it was announced that Meloy was gearing up to release Colin Meloy Sings Live!, a compilation album comprising songs played on his 2006 solo tour. The album found its way to music stores on April 8 and showcased Decemberists favorites, covers of Morrissey and Shirley Collins, an old Tarkio song (Colin's college band), and two previously unreleased tracks, such as "Dracula's Daughter," which Colin openly admits is his worst song to date. As if this gem of a live album weren't enough to raise moral, Meloy recently embarked on another of his legendary solo tours which made its way to the Somerville Theater in Massachusetts on Tuesday night.
The Somerville theater, which also serves as a movie theater, was crammed with an audience consisting of eager high school students (and their parents), college hipsters, and even some older adults. In the midst of this a small, soft-spoken woman in a white dress took the stage. She introduced herself as Laura Gibson, Colin Meloy's hand-picked opening act for this tour. Then she proceeded to play acoustic folk songs that were as soothing as lullabies. In between songs she spoke in her sweet voice about how much she enjoyed touring with Meloy and how adorable she found Hank (Meloy's two year old son) to be. After a half hour of winsome music, Gibson left the stage with a final assurance that Meloy's set was going to be fun.
After a brief set change, without any announcement or special introduction music, Colin Meloy made his way onto the stage. As is typical with his solo shows, he started the set off by saying "Hi, I'm Colin," and joked that anyone wanting to see the 8:00 p.m. showing of "Juno" should head over to the next theater. Thus the tone was set for the night. Meloy then went on to play "Wonder," a song written about the birth of his son. Even though this was the first song of the night, the audience was already captivated; everyone remained in their seats transfixed by the man on stage in the plaid shirt and green glasses.
Typically Decemberists shows are high in theatrics and audience participation, but during a Meloy solo show, there's a real connection between the audience and Meloy. It feels as though for this one night he and the audience are actually friends. He was more willing to engage the audience in small talk, comment on the different different songs' origins, laugh at his mistakes, and even take requests from the audience as to whether they were legitimate ( as polled during
"Shankill Butchers") or just funny (as asked during Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give
You Up," which was much appreciated by the audience even if it only lasted a few seconds). When alone, Meloy seems more open to being himself, and it truly reflected in the music he played that evening.
Meloy's set list consisted mostly of acoustic versions of Decemberists songs off of either The Crane Wife or 2005's Picaresque, which allowed the audience to sing along and aid in filling in missing instrument parts, such as the electric guitar solo during "The Perfect Crime #2" or the bass line during "The Sporting Life". Meloy also used this forum to present a song from his tour EP Colin Meloy Sings Sam Cooke, and another new song, which (as he hinted at) may be used on an upcoming Decemberists album. For Sam Cooke's "Cupid," Meloy brought Laura Gibson back onto the stage to sing along with him and encouraged the audience to participate as much as possible since it was a "make-out song" (sadly, no one in the audience seemed to have the guts to live up to the song's purpose). Meloy's new song was as epic as any past Decemberists song and told the tale of a boy named Avery who was working in a mine, and of his mother who desperately wanted him to quit. For a song in its early workings it was quite decent, and blended well with Meloy's past songwriting motifs.
The song that really won the crowd over was live favorite "The Mariner's Revenge Song." When performed with the entire band this song is incredibly epic and extremely high-energy, thus I was especially eager to see how Meloy would pull this off on his own. Somehow he managed to play this song by himself, only asking for the audience's help to sing the parts that bandmate Jenny Conlee would normally sing. The whole time it was hardly noticeable that it was one man on stage as the crowd was clapping feverously, and when the time came for the traditional "scream cause you're getting eaten by a whale" signal, the crowd roared like a sea monster, as if they were all going to their untimely dooms. This song was the perfect way to end the show (as it always is) and proved that Meloy can effectively command a stage all on his own.
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