THE DECEMBERISTS @ Metropolis

By Dan Stefik - The Ground-Up - 11/05/2006

Sometime early November, Colin Meloy and his lofty band of Decemberists pulled into Montreal’s Metropolis and delivered on that Sunday night. While I was under the impression that something was missing during their performance, I couldn’t shake the fact that this band has a vast, diversely made-up following dedicated to their own brand of indie-folk/rock.

Appreciating this Portland-based outfit is becoming a contentious affair; some people just don’t get it (the obsession) while others find no need to get anything (obsessed) in the first place. I say just like it if you like it and loathe it if you don’t.

The fact that EMI have signed them on to their shiny, polished roster has rubbed some the wrong way, and with good reason. This new batch of songs (The Crane’s Wife) have a glistening quality about them, especially when compared to the production qualities that nurtured Meloy’s last batch of songs, (2004’s Picaresque).

At the root of the Decemberists popularity is a deep-seated ambivalence. Some say that the band’s histrionics are over the top, and when compared to most cooler-than-thou trendy indie rock bands and their followers, they indeed are. Similar arguments are often leveled at Destroyer’s Dan Bejar and his idiosyncratic vocal stylings. I would argue that Bejar and Meloy are two of the most interesting lyricists in indie rock, but if you can’t appreciate where their pens meet the page, you just might not get it.

So, to say the least, a number of lovers and literature majors recently congregated at the Metropolis club, and Meloy and his cast of characters didn’t let them down. The set comprised a number of tracks from each album, but the majority of them from the latest, which might have disappointed some fans this time around. Regardless of the (major label) track leanings, the show was about much more than meets the ear. Meloy proved that indie rock can be so much more than the iPod generation have made it. It can be smart and it can be dubiously cool. At one point he had the rather large floor-bound crowd split right up the middle, the one side shouting, albeit lovingly, at the other in one immensely uninhibited sing-along. Doesn’t sound original enough for you? How about Meloy organizing his costumed bandmates onto the floor and narrating a scene from the stage: they were to render one of those moments of National Heritage (not unlike those wonderful commercials from Canadian Heritage we’ve all frequently seen on the tube). If that didn’t do it for you (read: make you proud to be a Canadian, or a native for that matter), then nothing could (or you simply weren’t there).

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