Concert Review: Colin Meloy

Colin Meloy

Liberty Hall

Review, photos and illustration by GRANT SNIDER

Colin Meloy is unfairly gifted – at stage banter. While Decemberists albums expose his knack for spinning melodic yarns about mercenaries and street urchins, his live performances are like listening to a bookish, non-ginger Conan O’Brian.

A his solo concert in Lawrence at Liberty Hall last Friday, Colin Meloy’s songs seemed almost secondary to the self-deprecating charisma and ironic back-stories that prefaced the tunes. Early in the show, he apologized for “getting all footnotey – like a fuckin’ David Foster Wallace book.”