Reviewed onWednesday March 30 (photo by Ashley Mar)
The last time I saw The Decemberists, it was in a tent in Hyde Park. From memory it was during the war, or maybe the Sydney Festival. I remember the screams of the wounded, the makeshift stretchers ferrying the audience to higher ground as the floodwaters swelled. And there onstage our Bonaparte, lead singer Colin Meloy, singing songs of supernatural crane wives and 18-minute epics of Irish mythology. It took our minds from the horror.
Jump six years later and two things are immediately apparent. One is, ‘Holy shit, six years?’ The second is that word sure got around; their audience here has grown. It may have taken some time for the crowd to really relax into the night – as Meloy himself remarked in one of his many between-song (and mid-song) observations, we were a quiet bunch. Yet long before the end of this two-and-a-half-hour set the crowd was all on its feet, and yes, this will sound insufferably mawkish, but there was such a sense of fellowship amongst us all; you couldn’t shake the suspicion we were all there hoping for something special, and by and large that’s exactly what we received.
True, for such a long set the deck was stacked towards newer material, but there were enough fan favourites and unexpected additions throughout to keep you engaged (and it’s not like their recent output suffers, though they have drifted to the rockier side of folk-rock these days). ‘The Mariner’s Revenge Song’ was delivered with all the flair you would hope for, yet despite being played at the end of the second encore, was surprisingly not the last song; a third encore saw the very unexpected ‘Dear Avery’. An unscheduled appearance from ‘Apology Song’ happened after Meloy forgot the words to ‘Rox In The Box’, and thought it was great to hear ‘Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect’, the sound levels were all over the place and Meloy’s voice was lost in the fug.
There were a handful of sound hiccups; loud electronic pops, and acoustic instruments seemed to especially suffer. But when your first round of encore songs includes a selection of six stories from The Hazards Of Love – including one of my all-time favourites, ‘The Hazards Of Love 4 (The Drowned)’, and the deliciously wicked ‘The Rake’s Song’ –small glitches are soon forgotten.
Six years. Far too long between drinks. Bring back the war, and the sound of cannon fire. Bring back The Decemberists.
