March 30, 2004
MUSIC REVIEW | THE DECEMBERISTS
A Band Reveling in 'Pantaloons' and Other Lyrical Mischief
By KELEFA SANNEH
The New York Times
Halfway through the Decemberists' sold-out show at the Bowery Ballroom on Friday night, Colin Meloy said, "I'm going to tell you a little story about my upbringing." And then he sang "The Chimbley Sweep," a ridiculous fable about an unloved boy: "I am a chimbley, a chimbley sweep/No bed to lie, no shoes to hold my feet."
Mr. Meloy is an anti-confessionalist: his devotion to artifice is a mischievous response to other singer-songwriters' promises of truth. But these songs never curdle into mere parody. Mr. Meloy has lovingly created his own alternate universe, and he draws his hapless characters with enormous wit and tenderness, even the chimbley sweeps.
He takes boundless pleasure in language, seeming to to rejoice every time he uses a word like "pantaloons" or "pinioned." He also has a thin, hale voice and four resourceful band mates. For "Leslie Anne Levine," about a baby's ghost ("My mother birthed me far too soon/Born at 9 and dead at noon"), the keyboardist switched to accordion, the guitarist switched to pedal steel, and the bassist picked up a bow.
As if to offset the willful obscurity of his lyrics, Mr. Meloy often seizes on bright, sometimes maddeningly catchy tunes. "Billy Liar," from the band's excellent 2003 album, "Her Majesty the Decemberists" (Kill Rock Stars), sets antiquated verse atop a rousing, swinging tune. It must be the most infectious maritime ballad in recent memory.
The Decemberists, based in Portland, Ore., recently released "The Tain" (Acuarela), an 18-minute operetta loosely based â?? or so they say â?? on Celtic mythology. On Friday Mr. Meloy bravely led his troops through a complete version. It is an appealing (if sometimes exhausting) homemade epic, full of intriguing narrative fragments and nimble musical U-turns.
Just when he seemed about to disappear into his own fantasy, Mr. Meloy would casually bring the songs back to earth, suggesting that he wasn't entirely opposed to confessionalism after all. He explained that "July, July!" was about a warehouse he used to live in, and listeners could follow the narrative thread from the mundane to the implausible. The part about the "road that meets the road that goes to my house" sounded autobiographical enough, but what of the "crooked French Canadian" who was "gut-shot runnin' gin"?
At other times Mr. Meloy seemed to be practicing a form of lyrical displacement, coyly hiding familiar feelings behind the unfamiliar scenery. "The Gymnast, High Above the Ground" is full of clever phrases and exotic slang, but the chorus made a simpler sort of sense. "Through the tarlatan holes, you've been slipping, been slipping away," He sang with a sigh, and you didn't have to be an expert in the history of textiles to figure out why he sounded so sad.
