We All Raise Our Voices to the Air! - A Decemberists Thread

[Kevin Davis]

"Easy Come, Easy Go," "Mistral," and " A Beginning Song" have a hard time keeping my interest. The first ten tracks with "12/17/12" as the closer would make this an A+ record for me.

[Jorge]

i'm also beginning to love 'her majesty the decemberists' more and more every time i listen to it. i kind of
ignored that album for a time and now it's growing on me so much that it might end up being my favorite.

Her Majesty was the first thing I ever heard by them. It was my absolute favorite until The Crane Wife. Some days I still go back and forth between the two. They're both so, so great but so, so different. It really comes down to mood more often than not.

I think I still consider TCW their best because it's so complete and fully realized and subtle. It's less of a sketch. Which maybe shouldn't make it "better." But, yeah, you can't go wrong with either. I also wonder, for myself, when the dust finally settles, now that I've lived with both for a long time, if Her Majesty won't end up in the prime spot.

i agree with you about the crane wife. that album proficiently displays both their tendency toward sprawling gimmickry and their capacity for concise poppiness. it's like the midpoint between hazards of love and the king is dead.

on a related note, i really dislike the hazards of love.

The final track in The Hazards of Love is pretty nice.

[Chris_H_2]

I consider myself a pretty big fan, and I had high hopes for this album. But alas I think it's a big snore fest and it left me pretty disappointed. I'll take Hazards over this album any day.

[epilogue]

"Easy Come, Easy Go," "Mistral," and " A Beginning Song" have a hard time keeping my interest. The first ten tracks with "12/17/12" as the closer would make this an A+ record for me.

I adore "Easy Come, Easy Go." It's a great piece of this album and a quintessential Decemberists tune. "Mistral" I like, but wouldn't cry if it was a B-Side. "A Beginning Song" I don't really care for. This band is bad at picking album closers. Their penultimate numbers are almost always far, far superior.

[Mike]

Oh man, A Beginning Song is one of my favorite (if not my favorite) songs on here. I can totally live without Easy Come, Easy go, though.

[Kevin Davis]

"Easy Come, Easy Go," "Mistral," and " A Beginning Song" have a hard time keeping my interest. The first ten tracks with "12/17/12" as the closer would make this an A+ record for me.

I adore "Easy Come, Easy Go." It's a great piece of this album and a quintessential Decemberists tune. "Mistral" I like, but wouldn't cry if it was a B-Side. "A Beginning Song" I don't really care for. This band is bad at picking album closers. Their penultimate numbers are almost always far, far superior.

I can get with that, for the most part, but would make an exception for "California One" and "Hazards of Love 4," one of the very best songs on that record and one of the few that truly stands alone apart from the context of the album.

I do really like "As I Rise," and think it works with "I Was Meant For the Stage" the way the major-dramatic-climax-into-gentle-epilogue mechanism is supposed to. They went for the same effect, I think, with "Of Angels and Angles," though for my money that's one of the worst songs in the Decemberists' songbook.

"Sons and Daughters" would have worked better had it gone for a similar effect to "As I Rise"; at six minutes it's too long and repetitive, and assumes a significance that its endearing but ultra-simple composition doesn't support. If they'd wanted something meatier at the end they should have gone with "After the Bombs," which I've on more than one occasion called Colin's single greatest song.

I like "Dear Avery" more than "This is Why We Fight," but neither are high points on that album.

[epilogue]

Sons and Daughters and Hazards 4 are the two that I adore. California One is good and better than Clementine, for sure. But it turns me off a bit as a closer. The others you can keep.

[Pie]

I saw the Decemberists live recently, and actually cried at Beginning Song. I hadn't even heard that or much of the new album at the time. I don't know why but the lyrics just got to me. But it was super embarrassing needless to say. The concert was awesome though, they're really special live.

[epilogue]

Here's the setlist from last night's show at The Beacon in NYC. Great show. Tons of energy. They sounded tight. They were having a blast on stage together. Wife and I had a way too much fun.

The Singer Addresses His Audience
Cavalry Captain
Down by the Water
Hank Eat Your Oatmeal / Calamity Song
Grace Cathedral Hill
Anti-Summersong
Make You Better
The Wrong Year
The Island
Los Angeles, I'm Yours
Carolina Low (Colin Meloy on solo guitar)
The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle the Thistles Undone)
A Bower Scene (Colin Meloy on electric guitar)
Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)
The Rake's Song (Jenny Conlee on drums)
16 Military Wives
Dracula's Daughter / O Valencia!
A Beginning Song

Encore:
12/17/12
The Mariner's Revenge Song

[Chris_H_2]

Here's the setlist from last night's show at The Beacon in NYC. Great show. Tons of energy. They sounded tight. They were having a blast on stage together. Wife and I had a way too much fun.

The Singer Addresses His Audience
Cavalry Captain
Down by the Water
Hank Eat Your Oatmeal / Calamity Song
Grace Cathedral Hill
Anti-Summersong
Make You Better
The Wrong Year
The Island
Los Angeles, I'm Yours
Carolina Low (Colin Meloy on solo guitar)
The Hazards of Love 1 (The Prettiest Whistles Won't Wrestle the Thistles Undone)
A Bower Scene (Colin Meloy on electric guitar)
Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)
The Rake's Song (Jenny Conlee on drums)
16 Military Wives
Dracula's Daughter / O Valencia!
A Beginning Song

Encore:
12/17/12
The Mariner's Revenge Song

With the exception of O Valencia in your show and the Crain Wife #3 in our show, that's the same exact show we saw here in Chicago.

[epilogue]

Yeah, they've never mixed things up too terribly much. They tend to do basically the same set for the leg of a tour. They change up a song or two here and there, but that's it.

That's why I try not to read their setlists before I see them. I like some element of surprise.

[epilogue]

Poster from last night's show. I didn't grab one. But I thought reeeeeeally hard about it.

[epilogue]

The Mariner's Revenge

[Bob Loblaw]

That's awesome, Joey.

[epilogue]

Are you going to see them this time around, Rafa?

[Gods' Die]

I've got these guys in June at Red Rocks with Spoon.

And at 8 AM the next morning I have a monthly meeting that I lead with the executive team...so I guess I'm the designated driver.

[epilogue]

Nice little write-up about their show at The Beacon. Well, nice, as long as you ignore where the author called Los Angeles, I'm Yours an obscure B-Side.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/live- ... y-20150408

[Chris_H_2]

Here's the Mariner's Revenge from the Chicago Theatre 2 weeks ago:

[epilogue]

That Colin Meloy sure has a great haircut/beard combo going on. Man. I'm totally jealous.

[Chris_H_2]

That Colin Meloy sure has a great haircut/beard combo going on. Man. I'm totally jealous.

If I could pull that off, I totally would.

Who am I kidding? No I wouldn't. My wife would divorce me.