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Nick Morgan and crew
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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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THE DECEMBERISTS
Royal Festival Hall, London, October 2nd 2007 |
| The
Decemberists are very clever. Front
man and song writer Chris Meloy went to college
and studied creative writing, and also spent a while
as a drama student before turning to rock and roll.
That’s probably why there is so much creativity
and drama in their songs. ‘Literate’
is a word that often used to describe them, ‘idiosyncratic’
is another. So take this as an example: “she's
a salty little pisser with your cock in her kisser”.
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| It’s
from ‘The tain’, which opens tonight’s
concert, and it’s okay because it’s
faux sea-shantyish lyrics. You have to get used
to faux, because between the creative, the dramatic,
the literary and the idiosyncratic there’s
a lot of faux in the Decemberists’
work. They contrive (yes – there’s a
lot of that too) to inhabit a faux Victorian (or
is it Edwardian?) landscape, full of mariners, murderers,
mistresses, mayhem and melancholy – oh yes,
and let’s not forget the whales. And more
than a nod to Russian history (give or take an ‘e’),
but I don’t have to explain that to you do
I? If you’re reading this then you’re
clever too. |
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It’s
all jumbled together with the music, the costumes
and outfits, and the neat graphics (many, if not
all, by Meloy’s partner Carson Ellis) to produce
a melange, or perhaps Serge, in a more maritime
sense, a bouillabaisse of safely edgy nostalgia,
tinged with a studied air of eccentricity. But the
Decemberists are very clever. To the surprise of
many they left indie label Kill
All Rockstars who had nurtured their talent
and signed for Capitol in 2005. |
| The
resulting album, The Crane Wife, has been lauded
by the critics – “an amazing, innovative,
storytelling record”, “an impressively
realized song cycle”, “bold and wondrous
entertainment”. The latter was from the Guardian,
and it’s a Guardianesque bookish lot in the
house tonight, overwhelming the indie kids by a
significant degree. But you see the Decemberists
are clever. Guardian readers are clever. Clever
likes clever. |
| Perhaps
the crusty crowd are also here because the Decemberists
music reminds them of some of the bands they were
brought up with. Actually it is such a derivative
sound that it could be almost all of the bands they
were brought up with. They acknowledge a debt to
British folk rockers such as Fairport Convention
(oddly Meloy often sounds a bit like Fairport’s’
Chris Leslie) but if you listen to the songs carefully
you’ll hear more than a little REM (very much
from the Out of Time era), and the Beatles and I
don’t know who else. Actually I do –
‘Perfect crime #2’ which really gets
the audience into gear is straight out of the early
Talking Heads oeuvre. Now I know that all bands
take ideas from other artists, borrow a bit here,
pay tribute there (Meloy, I think is a Morrissey
fan – listen to ‘The sporting life’)
but when you come away from a gig thinking mainly
of all the bands that you think you might have heard
in the course of a performance, rather than the
one who was actually playing, then you might think
things have gone a bit too far. And while we’re
at it they’ve also tried unconvincingly to
dress in a gothic mantle of horror and violence,
with songs like ‘Culling of the fold’
– “We’ve never recorded this one
because it’s way too violent”. |
| But
it’s primary school stuff (“Dash her
on the paving stones, it may break your heart to
break her bones, but someone’s got to do,
the culling of the fold”) compared to the
viciousness of the
Bad Seeds’ Murder Ballads (“Well
Jerry Bellows, he hugged his stool, closed his eyes
and shrugged and laughed, and with an ashtray as
big as a fucking really big brick I split his head
in half. His blood spilled across the bar like a
steaming scarlet brook”), or the darkness
of someone like Johnny
Dowd. As I said, it’s all a bit mixed
up (like a cassoulet perhaps?) and rather faux. |
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That having been said – it is pretty good
fun. The Royal Festival Hall is a hard gig to pull
off and the Meloy and his colleagues seem a little
overawed at the start. But their playing is excellent
and Meloy makes an unlikely animated front man.
Eventually, assisted by drummer John Moen, he manages
to engage the audience with some entertaining participation
stuff, particularly in their tour de force set-closer
‘The Mariner’s revenge song’,
which, if you’re not familiar with their work,
certainly captures all of the good points, if not
a few of the bad as well. The big song of the night
was ‘The crane wife 1 & 2’ –
I suppose it’s an epic number, and irritatingly
it has that magical property to send a shiver down
your spine, even if you’re trying not to like
it. That is quality song writing. |
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But
it was listening to it again (and ‘Praise
the Infanta’) after the show that I had my
true and ghastly insight about the Decemberists
which will, I’m sure, endear me to no-one.
Anyway – I’ll simply mention the
Strawbs, and say no more. Need I say more? Except
to add a throwaway conversation heard in the cloakroom
at the end between some very excited yoofs. “Yeah
cool man, we got the set lists”. “Awesome
dude. I got a plectrum”. “Man that’s
nothing – I got an earplug”. |
| Oh
yes – and sadly I read that the band have
cancelled the rest of their European tour due to
illness. A great shame because they’ve clearly
got many dedicated fans who’ll be upset to
miss them. Get well soon. - Nick Morgan |
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the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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