While visiting my parents over Christmas last year, my father said something very unsettling as we browsed through cds at a Borders.
“Here’s a group I heard about on NPR, I don’t even know how you’d describe them. Very, very interesting and theatrical.”
He then proceeded to show me a Decemberists album. Naturally, this horrified me to no end. Some background: The Decemberists have been one of my favorite bands since about 2003. You’ll have to trust that I say that not to claim any kind of hipness (I don’t think anyone could argue the avant garde based on them anymore) but rather to illustrate why my dad’s appreciation for Colin Meloy threw me for such a loop.
I mean, do I even need to explain why it’s uncool to like the same bands as your parents? They’re supposed to be listening to stuff like Barbara Streisand and John Denver!
I write all this as a lead in to talk about the Decemberists’ show at Merriweather Post Pavillion on Monday. The crowd (at least in the Pavillion section) was at least 40 percent people whose age would be best described as Middle or above. At times it seemed like we were surrounded by families who had arrived directly from soccer practice and a nice dinner at Chiles (the 24oz beer line provided a brief respite from this scene.) The whole setting had a bit of a state fair vibe.
Now, nobody likes to think that their musical tastes are staid or commonplace, but at a certain point during the show I was forced to acknowledge that the same quirks and talents that so endear the Decemberists to me also resonate with Mr. and Mrs. Robert Homeowner from Laurel, Maryland. And I was totally fine with that! All around me were people who enjoyed Mr. Meloy’s tale of murdering children as much as I did. They too were moved by the mix of bookishness with theatricality and pop sensibility that the Decemberists so ably muster. Maybe normal folks can have decent artistic taste.
And while this show was perhaps less interactive and the crowd less my peers than when I saw the group at First Ave in Minneapolis or the Mill in Iowa City (here’s where I shoot for cred), I didn’t find it any less exuberant. I doubt anyone left Columbia without a smile on Monday.
As Katie observed after we’d finished singing along with the crowd to the refrain of the encore (“Hear all the bombs fade away…”), things felt notably more optimistic than the last time we’d heard the song played in early 2006 during the height of Bushism. Some may credit the new administration with the change (TM); I think it was the Decemberists all along.
Photo from Flickr.
While I too love the Decemberists, I think offering the lyrics to “The Rake’s Song” is a really inappropriate exhibition of their work. Their narrative ballads and sometimes outlandish scenarios (“The Mariner’s Revenge Song” comes to mind) can occasionally turn violent, but for anyone reading this who has never heard of the Decemberists, offering up those particular lyrics makes me wince. That song crosses the line of tact and taste, and isn’t a funny joke. Burning your children to death and being a widower aren’t appropriate matter for pop music, and spreading those lyrics in any capacity just feeds it. What about “Red Right Ankle” or “On the Bus Mall”? There are so many other good alternatives to showcase their incredible skill.
I mean, I understand your concern Alison, but I don’t really agree about the content of the lyrics. For me, The Rake’s Song works in the context of the story behind The Hazard’s of Love, so I don’t find the lyrics objectionable, disturbing as they may be. I don’t really think they’re meant to be taken as a “joke” per se either.
The reason I highlighted that particular song was to illustrate the dichotomy of people I wouldn’t normally associate with “challenging” music rocking out to and enjoying a very strange song. But you’re right that it’s not really representative of the Decemberists as a whole.
So, people who aren’t Decemberists fans: take Alison’s advice and check out more of their tunes. Red Right Ankle and On the Bus Mall seem like excellent places to start.
’twas a great show from up on the lawn. it was interesting to contrast the smaller crowd and how they acted at this show with the near sell-out crowd the next night at the NIN/JA show.
[...] the Department of Happy Coincidences, it appears that Colin Meloy will be joining me in Infinite Summer. [...]
You know, my pops and I have been sharing the same musical taste since I was in high school (Foo Fighters, Marvin Gaye, Cat Stevens to name a couple). No he doesn’t like everything I enjoy, and and vice versa but for the most part, my Dad’s pretty hip. He took my friend and I to HFStival my sophomore year (our Mum’s would never let us go unsupervised). While he sat in the stands, wearing a Grateful Dead t-shirt and being offered recreational drugs (no one offered me any), I was in the mosh pit with my friend getting thrown around like a rag doll.
If anything, it fills me with joy that we’re not so different after all. One day, you’re going to look back and smile.
But I do see your point about the show at Merriweather. When an older neighbor, bought the last Zero 7 album, I immediately thought “okay, well that’s done”. Truthfully though, I blame Garden State, not my neighbour.