The Decemberists' Colin Meloy plays intimate Austin show despite bronchial virus
April 7, 2008, at La Zona Rosa
By Erik Adams
Published: April 9th, 2008 | 10:00am
When fronting the Decemberists, Colin Meloy has a lot standing between himself and an audience — things like antique attire, stage décor, and the massive sound made by his band mates. On this, his third solo, acoustic tour, the thing coming between Meloy and his adoring public is a bronchial virus. During his performance at La Zona Rosa, however, he showed that he knows how to use this to his advantage. “The sympathy meter is through the roof,” Meloy said, in response to the many “aww”s prompted by his coughs.
Meloy blamed any forgotten chords or fumbled lyrics on his condition, but his apologizing was unnecessary — part of the joy of seeing an artist lay themselves and their songs bare lies in the potential for minor disaster. The coughing fit that sidetracked a freshly written song suite was as endearing as any of the jokes Meloy made (mostly at the expense of himself) throughout the evening.
The suite was one of two new pieces that made their way into Meloy’s setlist, the other being a buoyant paean to exposed CIA operative Valerie Plame. I’m interested to see if these new songs make it on to the next Decemberists record, but also worried that, as a songwriter, Meloy is leaning too heavily on subjects and sounds that have worked for him in the past. Shades of “16 Military Wives” and “The Bagman’s Gambit” could be heard in the Plame song, while the suite’s first movement contained a magical animal, not unlike the titular cycle of songs that framed 2006’s The Crane Wife (Capitol).
He traded on other’s greatest hits as well, making like Ben Folds circa 2002 while conducting the crowd for the vocal outro of “Billy Liar.” An audience-participatory “Mariner’s Revenge Song” went off much better, and Meloy let the audience know what he means when he sings “And the captain quailed” (simply put: the captain is saying “Oh no,” in a cartoony voice).
The set spanned the whole of his recorded output, with cuts culled from all three Decemberists full-lengths (thank you, “Leslie Anne Levine” and “The Bachelor and the Bride”) plus a Morrisey cover (“Every Day Is Like Sunday”), that song about the stolen bike, a Tarkio track (“Tristan and Iseult”), and a duet with opener Laura Gibson on Sam Cooke’s classic “Cupid” (making the tour-only EP Collin Meloy Sings Sam Cooke a less “WTF?” affair). You needn’t be a fan to enjoy, but it didn’t hurt.
Gibson’s set paired delicate, finger-picked, eyes-closed folk (think Nick Drake’s Pink Moon) with the voice of a muted mellophone. It was the perfect mood-setter for the evening’s more intimate moments, though the volume was barely enough to drown out the bar cash registers clanging from the back of the venue. You may not get such access to the artists at a full-band Decemberists show, but you don’t have to listen to financial transactions all night, either.
Issue #35
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