Intimacy Issues

March 12, 2006

Live in Concert / El Rey Theater
Colin Meloy

January 22nd, 2006

Does anyone care about a show I went to two months ago? Probably not, but I wanted to blog it just for posterity’s sake, I guess. This was a far cry from the solo Meloy shows I went to last year at the teeny-tiny Hotel Cafe, where the fire code only permitted about a tenth of the El Rey. This show would be a lot more crowded, including a large percentage of scenesters who really liked to talk during the show.

Going for a campfire feel, Meloy put on another excellent show, a nice blend of acoustic performance and self-deprecating banter. The setlist was the most diverse I’d seen from him. The Decemberists standards ranged from ancient tracks like “Shiny” to more picaresque numbers like “Engine Driver” and “We Both Go Down Together.” With the recently released Omnibus available, Meloy also played a few Tarkio tracks, “Devil’s Elbow” and “Tristan and Iseult.” On the rarities side, there was the old b-side “Every Thing I Try To Do, Nothing Seems to Turn Out Right,” and the more recent nugget “Bandit Queen.” On top of that, there were two new songs that may eventually end up on their major label debut, the romanticly overrought “Valencia” and a macabre new cautionary song called “Shankhill Butchers.” If that weren’t enough, he also played a song from his tour only EP, a cover of Shirley Collins’s “Barbara Allen.”

I always have a blast hanging with Colin, and this show was no exception. Now if I could only figure out a way to keep all the chatty cathy’s out.

Photos available at IceCreamMan.com

NPR has the Washington DC show available streaming and on MP3

Posted in From Blown Speakers