Ducks @ Oregon - University of Oregon

The Hazards of Love

Katie D.

May 22, 2009 - 1:00 AM

This is not a romantic blog.

This is yet-another blog about a mind-blowing concert I attended. This time, it was the Decemberists, an indie rock band out of Portland, OR. I saw them at McDonald Hall in the spring of 2007, and it was a true highlight of my freshman year. During that concert, lead singer and former UO student Colin Meloy actually got off the stage, leaned on my friend Verni, and played a solo. Then, during the final encore, they brought out a massive paper mache whale and made us practice screaming and gnashing our teeth.

I have two regrets from that concert: first, I didn't have a camera, and second, I didn't buy a shirt.

As you might have guessed from the description of that 2007 concert, The Decemberists are a determinedly odd group. Their songs are often on such diverse subjects as Civil War love songs ("Yankee Bayonet"), Spanish blood feuds ("Oh Valencia!"), revenge on the high seas ("A Mariner's Revenge"), and an apology for losing a friend's bicycle ("An Apology Song"). It was during the "Mariner's Revenge" that the whale made its appearance during the 2007 concert. In addition to all of this, they insist on using obscure vocabulary. One of their albums is titled "Picaresque," and I bet that less than half of the people who will read this know what that means. I had to look it up and I'm a literature major, so don't feel too bad. (Check out Wikipedia if you are feeling bad about this. The basic idea, though, is a novel about a low-class hero living by his wits. Think Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens). Another fun example of obscure vocabulary is a line from the song "The Island," that reads "The curlews carve their arabesques."

Anyway, I carefully charged my camera battery this time, and prepared for another mind-blowing experience.

Their new album, The Hazards of Love, is a sort of rock-opera. The songs form a single, unified plot, and the singers have characters and costumes. They added two female vocalists for the album, Becky Stark and Shara Worden, who each added a new depth and power to their music. The plot line is distinctly indie rock: (spoiler alert!) The Queen of the forest finds an abandoned baby, and raises him, giving him the body of a fawn by day and a man's by night. But of course a woman comes along and they fall in love, and she becomes pregnant. The Queen is jealous, and helps The Rake to steal her away. Our Hero wagers his life for the chance to rescue her, and then they both drown in the river. Shara Worden is the lead singer for My Brightest Diamond, which opened for the Decemberists during their 2007 tour. She has an incredibly powerful voice, and the segments when she sang the Queen were simply amazing.

If you want to check them out, you should really listen to the album as a whole. But my favorite songs are "Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)" and "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid."

In addition to playing the entire Hazards of Love album, the Decemberists also played about an hour of their older music. There was also a good amount of banter by Colin Meloy, including repeated references to his days as a resident in the Spiller Hall dormitories.

The big surprise of this concert was during the final encore song, which began with only three musicians on stage, but then evolved into an Oregon Trail reenactment as the other band members snaked their way through the crowd. Colin Meloy directed us to pretend to be "a wild river," "The Rocky Mountains," and "wild gypsies riding camels" (although I'm not so sure how historically accurate this is). Anyway, it was very funny, and meant that the crowd got some up-close-and-personal time with the band.

This time I bought a shirt. I don't usually, because the shirts cost as much as the concert tickets, which means that you can only go see half the number of concerts. But the tour shirts are awesome, and I don't regret it a bit.