Colin Meloy
Colin Meloy Sings Live!
Kill Rock Stars
By Doug Wallen
Detractors love to accuse Colin Meloy’s ambitious and beloved Decemberists of pompousness, something the band’s epic, often nautically themed, and recently prog-powered albums don’t do much to resist. But Meloy has always had a breezy yet sly sense of humor, as proven when he strips his growing songbook down to just his quivering voice and acoustic guitar on this long-awaited solo album.
Standing before appreciative audiences on his 2006 tour, Meloy cracks cute jokes between and sometimes during songs, and even daring to unveil what he calls the worst one he’s ever written, the incomplete “Dracula’s Daughter.” (It’s pretty awful but all the funnier for it). He also tackles obscure folkie Shirley Collins’ take on the traditional “Barbara Allen” and nods knowingly to R.E.M and Fleetwood Mac, among others.
Decemberists material of course gets a lot of attention too, from the fragile “Red Right Ankle” and jaunty “Cautionary Song” (for which fans jumps in on the barroom-esque final line) to the striking “We Both Go Down Together” and dreamy “The Gymnast, High Above The Ground.” Looking back further, Meloy’s prior band Tarkio is fondly remembered with the opening “Devil’s Elbow,” and the closer of the Decemberists’ debut Castaways And Cutouts, “California One / The Youth And Beauty Brigade,” is rendered in 12 minutes with a section of the Smiths’ classic “Ask” tacked onto the end.
So yes, Meloy’s writerly imagination and unabashed Anglophobia are both in full effect here, a combination that comes off as preaching to the converted as much as keeping the aforementioned haters at bay. With that said, it’s tough not to appreciate such well-known songs anew when they’re suddenly robbed of such elaborate window dressing. And like his hero Robyn Hitchcock’s memorable – not to mention live and lovingly stripped-down – Storefront Hitchcock soundtrack, there’s an intimacy and immediacy here that only makes Meloy’s many charms ring truer.
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