Decemberists bring glorious ‘history lesson’ to Kansas City
The Decemberists. // Photo by Jack Howland
The Decemberists
Grinders KC
Saturday, August 13
Colin Meloy paused for a moment on Saturday night to speak with a scholarly curiosity about the surrounding geography, as he is wont to do.
The 47-year-old frontman of The Decemberists has written rock songs about topics as far-ranging as the cold war, the Ottoman Empire and the myriad ways it’s not fun to be a coal miner. So it came as a genuine thrill for the hundreds standing in the sticky outdoor humidity to see him discuss the “confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers,” which sounds like the title of a lost B-side about John Brown or the voyage of Lewis and Clark. The place where the two rivers converge is Kaw Point Park, less than five miles away from where he stood.
“I just learned that today,” Meloy said to the crowd at Grinders KC in the Crossroads, packed around the stage and clear to the back of the venue, on woodchips, cement, and bleachers that run along the fences. “So take your pick—you’re either the Missouri, or the Kansas, or the combination Missouri-Kansas River.”
He announced the next song was about a river and gracefully transitioned into Riverswim from the 2015 EP Florasongs, an understated, Bob Dylan-esque ballad that, like a great many Decemberists songs, evokes themes of family, nature, and history.
There were other times during the night when Meloy spoke like the cool teacher to the near-sold-out, cross-generational crowd, using a hand to shield his eyes from the spotlight so he could see everyone’s faces. During one moment of banter early on, he casually gave Kansas City an off-the-cuff nickname, “The Land of 1,000 streets,” which somehow felt on-point.
“I just made that up,” Meloy said. “It’s cool, though. You can take it, and you should use it.”
He asked if Kansas City has a motto and—minus the one guy near me who screamed “Heart of America” with every ounce of energy he had—most people shouted out, “City of Fountains,” in a communal cry of KC pride. He said he liked it.
The Portland band didn’t shy away from their origins as groovy history buffs, playing through songs from their 2003 debut Castaways and Cutouts, 2005’s Picaresque and 2006’s landmark The Crane Wife with contagious joy and spontaneity. Though the folk-inspired Decemberists may not typically be categorized as arena rock, they made a compelling case to be thought of in the likes of big-band peers like Arcade Fire, putting on an exhilarating show that indulged in sweeping orchestrations and gloriously loud rock-and-roll.
They set the tone for the evening before even stepping out, as the speakers to played “In The Hall of the Mountain King” amid the darkness.
The slow-building 1875 work, instantly recognizable to fans of classical music or those who have seen the rowing scene in “The Social Network,” sounded as if it were being performed by a woodwind section slightly out of tune. The wobbly orchestra grew until it erupted into a blaring, chaotic mess, and everyone at Grinders clapped in sweaty anticipation.
Then the lights came up and they played something brighter.
The Decemberists. // photo credit Jack Howland
The Decemberists chose, brilliantly, to open the night with “July, July!” from their first record, a joyous summertime anthem made to be shouted together. They proceeded to move through older songs to the approval of fans over the age of 25 like myself, having been a junior in high school when they released their country gem The King is Dead, their best-selling album to date. The band’s performance of “Rox in the Box,” a rocking ode to miners killed in the Granite Mountain Disaster of 1917, brought me back to all the times I played the record in my car or on my cracked iPod. Like the sound of a simpler time, for myself and the world.
It was a time when my friends and I felt the coolest bands to listen to were the ones not trying to be cool at all, unapologetically crafting their songs with verbose language and little-known references. Bands like Vampire Weekend, Fleet Foxes and The Decemberists tried to sell you on their vision—no one else’s—and succeeded.
“We have some mining fans out there? But not, like, modern-day mining, but old-time mining?” Meloy asked into the microphone as he introduced “Rox in the Box.” “Then you came to the right place.”
The Decemberists. // photo credit Jack Howland
‘A little bit of a history lesson’
The band’s instrumentation was everything one would hope for from a Decemberists show, with Jenny Conlee on the piano and the accordion; Nate Query bringing out the electric and upright bass, and Chris Funk plucking the banjo one moment before shredding the guitar the next. They performed their classic hits with the same camaraderie of the recordings, including the playful, charging “The Sporting Life” and the gorgeous civil war duet, “Yankee Bayonet.”
Touring singer Lizzy Ellison added another harmonic layer to these songs, her polished voice a wonderful compliment to Meloy’s more natural storytelling tenor, with his protracted enunciation of words and unabashed emotion. The Decemberists sounded like the band they’ve always been, even when, late in the show, they shifted into newer music that can sometimes feel like a more streamlined version of their best work.
Their most recent album, I’ll Be Your Girl, from 2018, didn’t receive as laudatory reviews as earlier albums, lacking some of the lyrical and musical inventiveness of earlier albums. I’ll admit I haven’t listened to the band as much in the past decade as I did back when they were singing about Andalusian tribes, baronies of ivy and the lash-flashing Leda of pier nineteen. But “Severed,” the lead single from the record, was undeniably stellar, a straightforward rock song that grows out of delicious synths and distorted electric guitar.
It can at first be jarring to listen to Meloy coolly sing lines like “I alight like a whisper” and “don’t you get clever,” like watching your father rap or—more accurately—your history teacher talk about Woodstock.
The show, however, was a thrilling reminder that the man knows how to put on a great rock show, whether he’s crooning over 80s-esque beats or going on about the exploits of Ben Franklin.
The Decemberists. // photo credit Jack Howland
In introducing the second-to-last song of the night, Meloy warned there would be foul language, but clarified, “I’m not responsible for the lyrics; I did not write them. You can blame them on Lin-Manuel Miranda.”
He launched into “Ben Franklin’s Song,” the band’s addition to the Hamilton-verse that in 2017 was the first “Hamil-drop,” a series of previously unheard numbers released by Miranda. He had apparently written the song for the musical with the Decemberists in mind before he had to cut it, and later gave it to them to make their own.
The song begins with Meloy strumming an upbeat riff on the acoustic guitar, with harmonica and claps soon coming in to support him, creating a warm, musical-theater-y feeling that something big is coming. He then begins to belt the shamelessly nerdy lyrics about Franklin inventing electricity, being a genius and wearing bifocals. The chorus is adorably profane:
“Do you know who the fuck I am? I am Poor-Richards-Almanack writing Benjamin Fuckin’ Franklin.”
It would have been great as a number in the original Broadway show, but it’s pretty fun to hear the Decemberists own a song that so clearly speaks to their sensibilities and their interests.
The crowd roared as soon as they knew it was about to be played.
“You’ll get a little bit of a history lesson in the process,” Meloy said.
A perfect summation of the band and the rousing concert they put on in Kansas City this weekend.
