The Decemberists

[starlady]

I went to see The Decemberists in Oakland on Valentine's Day. It's my fourth time seeing them (and my first time seeing them without my sister ;_; ), but I always enjoy seeing them a lot--they put on a really good, really fun show every time, and every time the music sounds different, even when they play some of the same songs.

As befitted a show on Valentine's Day in California, they opened with "California One" and played a lot of their more romantic(-ish) songs, including "We Both Go Down Together" and some of my absolute favorites, including the complete "The Crane Wife" (what's the word for a little epic within a larger epic?). Since they're touring for The King Is Dead, their new album, they played a fair few songs off of there, though fewer than I was expecting in all honesty. Just as excitingly, the violinist they hired for the tour--Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek--played violin parts on every song, and she sang backup on "The Mariner's Revenge Song" and took the lead on "Won't Want for Love" from The Hazards of Love, which was really cool. Also really cool was doing "The Mariner's Revenge Song" at the end of the first encore; this is the first time they've not done "Sons and Daughters" either as the last song of the set or the final encore, which was cool. Also cool was that they made us all scream and wail and groan like we were being swallowed alive by a whale.

But the best thing of all was that during "The Chimbley Sweep" the drummer married a couple on stage, and then they pretended to be a crappy wedding band. Yup. It was awesome. My complaints about concert-goers out here still stand, but by the end just about everyone was into it; it was great.

Comments

[juniperphoenix]

I love the Decemberists. :) At the concert I went to they played the entirety of The Hazards of Love, which was awesome.

[torachan]

I saw them do the whole of Hazards of Love last year, too. (They also did a separate set with older songs as well, so it was like a double concert.)

[starlady]

That was a good tour, too! I think my favorite of the four was the tour before that, when they were touring for that spate of EPs they did--I saw them two days after Obama was elected, in Philly, and the crowd energy was just amazing. The time before that they performed all of The Tain, and it was summer at an outdoor venue, so that was pretty cool too.

[torachan]

This was the third time we've seen them. The first was like five years ago when Picaresque came out. We were supposed to see them a few years ago when they were doing a tour called "the long and the short of it" or something like that, where it was two nights, one with all long songs and one with all shorter songs. We had tickets to both nights, but they cancelled the concert due to illness or something. D:

[starlady]

Yeah, that one was cool. Seeing it live helped me understand the story better, too. I love them so much.

[torachan]

Gah, I still need to post my concert report (now two weeks ago...).

[starlady]

Yeah, when choosing which post to post I picked this one because of its age. It's so easy when I'm busy to just let posts slide.