The Decemberists' ‘colossal experiment'

Former Missoulian Colin Meloy fronts the most literary of literary rock bands

Preview

THE DECEMBERISTS in concert, Thursday, Nov. 16, 9 p.m., Wilma Theatre. TICKETS TO THE EVENT ARE SOLD OUT.

There is something about the Decemberists that tends to drive journalists and photographers to fits of unbridled indulgence.

Filter Magazine framed their profile of the band as a play written in five acts plus a prologue, and threw in an A-to-Z guide to front-man Colin Meloy's lyrical lexicon (“A” is for “arethusa,” “B” is for “bosun,” “C” is for “chaparral,” and so on).

Under the Radar Magazine illustrated its fawning, nine-page cover story about the band with elaborately staged photos depicting each band member as a suspect in a gruesome game of Clue (“Mr. Meloy in the library with the cleaver,” “Ms. Conlee in the dining room with the rope,” and so on).

Perhaps the inclination toward such offbeat forms of journalism has to do with the fact that the Decemberists fall so far outside the musical mainstream that traditional, inverted-pyramid journalism just doesn't seem to fit the subject matter.

Here we have a man from Helena singing with a British-ish accent, fronting a group that usually looks more like a convention of antebellum librarians than a rock band, performing music that combines old-world instruments - bouzoukis and dulcimers and cellos - with rock forms and lyrics that often read more like ancient fairy tales than modern pop songs.

The plot thickens when we consider that the band, lately hailed as this year's biggest breakout in the indie rock scene, isn't actually indie anymore. Last December, the band signed to Capitol Records, a subsidiary of big-five heavyweight EMI Group.

By going against the current, the Decemberists have suddenly found themselves awash in the mainstream. That's the kind of impenetrable illogic that'll turn any inverted pyramid upside down.

Missoula music fans maintain a particularly attentive interest in the Decemberists' fortunes, as we claim Colin Meloy as one of our own. Back in the late '90s, while earning a creative writing degree at the University of Montana, Meloy fronted local alt-country band Tarkio. (Disclosure: I once unsuccessfully auditioned as the band's drummer, and met my wife at the band's final gig.)

In 1999, Tarkio disbanded and Meloy left for Portland, Ore., where he set about rebuilding his musical identity and reputation.

“I just needed a change from Missoula,” said Meloy. “I had been there three years, finished school, most of my friends had left so it was becoming a pretty barren landscape socially for me. I was fully expecting to go back to school for a (master of fine arts degree), and music was just biding time until then. But after a few years it became clear I didn't want to go back for the MFA, and a career in music seemed the most exciting option.”

Portland's scene of coffeehouses and music clubs offered the perfect petri dish for Meloy's increasingly experimental approach to music-making - even if it was tough going in the beginning.

“All my contacts I'd stitched together out here (in Portland) in the months before I moved neglected to call me once I actually arrived; so after a couple months, I realized I had to start at absolute square-one, playing open-mic nights and such,” Meloy said in a previous interview with the Missoulian. “It was a big change, going from these big shows in Missoula, to shows in front of six people.”

But Meloy persisted, and his recognition grew quickly in the scene. In 2001, he formed the Decemberists with upright bassist Nate Query, keyboard and accordion player Jenny Conlee, Chris Funk on theremin and pedal steel guitar, and drummer Ezra Holbrook (Holbrook was later replaced by Rachel Blumberg, who in turn was later replaced by current drummer John Moen).

Originally, the band - whose members mostly hailed from nonrock backgrounds - was hailed as a kind of weird new folk outfit, in large part because the members generally played acoustic instruments. But over time, Meloy increasingly broke out his electric guitar, and the band started moving off the coffeehouse circuit and into nightclubs.

They also wound their way onto Kill Rock Stars, a Seattle-based record label better known for their extensive lineup of punk acts (Sleater-Kinney, Bikini Kill, Unwound) than for oddball folkies. It was an odd fit, but it worked, producing three critically acclaimed full-length records in four years.

Along the way, the band began to garner something of a cult following around Portland and the greater Northwest. By the time the band's third full-length record, 2005's “Picaresque,” hit the streets, major labels were, in Meloy's words, “sniffing around.”

“We had done a few lunch meetings in Los Angeles with labels in the past, but after we did “Picaresque,” it just started to seem like the opportunity was going to be there to move up to a major label,” said Meloy. “So we decided to go for it.

“Obviously,” he added, “it was a practical move that made a lot of sense, the contract was really strong and it allowed us the kind of budget to record the new album that we couldn't have had otherwise.”

The band signed to Capitol Records last December. On the third of October, they released their first album on the label, “The Crane Wife.”

Anybody who worried that the Decemberists' curious flights of fancy might be shot down by big-label dream-dashers need only listen through “The Island,” the second track of “The Crane Wife,” for reassurance. A three-part prog-rock epic that sprawls over 12 minutes of Yes- and Pink Floyd-influenced jamming, “The Island” is about as far from standard major-label fare as one gets in this era of radio-friendly, three-minute pop pablum.

The rest of the album plays out accordingly: accordion and hurdy-gurdy, archaicisms and obtusities, all blended into the sharp consistency of a Very Superior Old Pale. Meloy's long-lingering thematic obsessions - innocence brutalized; love unrequited; “boats bobbing in the blue of the bay” - reveal themselves ever anew, in clever and occasionally inspired recombinations.

So too, as ever, do the 50-cent words and mythological obscurities return in plenty. Only Meloy would bother to force a rhyme for “dirigible,” craft an entire song around the horrific crimes of the so-called Shankill Butchers (an Irish mob responsible for some 30 murders in the 1970s), drop a reference to “Sycorax and Patagon,” or shoehorn the words “Vavilov,” “solanum,” and “asteraceae” into a single verse of a song.

Meloy's pronounced vocal affect - a faux-Brit twang that turns a simple word like “bastard” into something more like “bast-uh-ur-eed,” and a pretty phrase like “summer blows away” into “sah-my blay-oos eh-why” - remains a signature of the band's sound, for better or worse. Though it may sound put-on, Meloy insists that his style of shaping words when he sings has never been a conscious decision.

“I think it's just what came to me through the music I was listening to when I was younger,” said Meloy, whose love of Morrissey and Robyn Hitchcock has never been much of a secret. “That kind of stylizing I thought was apropos for the kind of music we were playing. I never intentionally sang one way or another; it's just the sounds that come out of my mouth.”

All in all, “The Crane Wife” brings more of the best of what the Decemberists have always been about.

Whether that's enough to maintain the support of a major label, remains to be seen. There's no clear hit single on this album, making it a tougher sell than, say, the latest record by fellow Capitol Records labelmate Coldplay (or even, one might argue, than “Picaresque,” which boasted its share of rousing sing-alongs).

But in a perfect world, the sophistication, cohesiveness, and inventiveness of this record would be its own best selling point.

Meloy can only hope that turns out to be the case.

“It's all part of our colossal experiment, to see how far we can take this thing,” said Meloy. “The label knew going in that we were going to make a Decemberists record, which meant retaining some of the things from previous records and developing in directions that we feel are important. That's what they got.

“We've been incredibly supported all along, and I just hope that can continue.”

Arts reporter Joe Nickell can be reached at 523-5358 or at jnickell@missoulian.com.

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