AN EVENING WITH COLIN MELOY

I went to see Colin Meloy last night and it was great. Here is the show review that will be posted later at Almack's Dance Hall

Amazing pics coming soon courtesy of Elise Largesse!

I was a little weary when my friend Dorit asked me to go see Colin Meloy's solo show. Don't get me wrong, I love the Decemberists, but I didn't know if he was going to play just solo stuff, or Decemberists stuff or what, and I didn't really want to risk my $30. But I realized that I should go, because, let's face it, Colin Meloy is amazing, and I should be taking more chances in my life anyways.
We arrived at Music Hall in time to see the opener (shocking I know), Laura Gibson, who was a delightful surprise. She said she came from a tiny logging town outside of Portland, and from the top of her strawberry blond pony tail to the hem of her peter pan collar dress, she looked just the part. She had a refreshingly authentic demeanor that was really endearing, and by the end of her set I just wanted to put her in my pocket and take her home with me. She said the funniest things, but since she said everything in a quiet little girl voice, I'm not sure everyone heard her. Her voice was not overtly powerful but at the same time hypnotizing. She really won the crowd over when she sang a haunting rendition of traditional song "All The Pretty Horses", so much so that she got the crowd to sing along with her on the last song of her set "This is Not the End", although I think most people were warming their voices up for Colin.
It took the roadies a surprisingly long time to set up for AN ACOUSTIC show...as in only using a guitar, but I guess there needed to be three guitars on stage, a table with pictures on it and a bottle of Smart Water, and a chair with a record player on it. Whatever it takes Colin, just do your thang. Anyways, finally he comes on and the crowd goes nuts. I mean, these are like the die-hard fans of the Decemberists and boy were they excited to see their messiah saunter down the stairs carrying a two-thirds empty bottle of wine. This was a far more casual (and probably slightly more intoxicated) Colin than the one I saw dressed in a sharp pinstripe suit in San Francisco last year. Wearing jeans and a plain white t-shirt, he almost looks like a bro, save the quirky little newsboy cap he kept tipping to the audience. It is still a mystery to me how so many people (myself included) find Colin incredibly sexy, despite his incredibly average appearance. Must be his extensive knowledge of literary mythology.
From the first note of "Apology Song" he had the crowd hanging from his every word. Everyone had their heads tipped upward, just absorbing every note with the biggest smiles on their faces. I breathed out a sigh of relief knowing that this was going to be a set full of Decemberists songs. Huzzah! The second song (and my all-time favorite), "The Sporting Life", made my heart so happy. When he ended the song with a few lines of The Smiths "Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now", my heart basically just fell out of my chest. Colin and Morrissey are just a deadly combination that my emotions can hardly take. Sadly, that was the last I was to hear of Morrissey for the rest of the night. After that he made his way through crowd favorites "O Valencia!" and "The Engine Driver". Somewhere in his set he told us a "really embarrassing story that shows how dumb I am" about how up until very recently he thought that Williamsburg, BK and Colonial Willaimsburg in Virginia were the same place. "I just thought these gentrifying hipsters were encroaching on this little circle that was being preserved for history". Needless to say, he had the crowd in stitches.
The thing that was so great about his performance was that it was like when you watch your favorite movie with the directors commentary on. He would pause in the middle songs to tell little anecdotes about how the song was written, or how it gets performed onstage. He introduced us to the characters sitting on his table, including Consuela the naked mermaid, Cornwallis the something-I-can't-remember, and a picture of a sock puppet who was soon to be named Alex after some dude in the audience who kept shouting out questions. I think Colin named the puppet after him to shut him up.
He proceeded to play through both new material (including a song about methodically killing children), an more Decemberists like "Leslie Anne Levine", "On The Bus Mall", and "Red Right Ankle". The closing number of his encore was "The Mariners Revenge Song", which is typically the most theatrical number of the Decemberists live show, so it was a surprise that he attempted it with a lone guitar, but the crowd was ecstatic. He had the crowd sing Jenny's high part to great success. He finished with a flourish, tipped his hat one last time, and left the crowd to soak in the epic-ness of their experience.