The Pop Culture Manifesto: My November Wrists + The Decemberists in the Big Apple (Store) = So(Ho) Much Fun

Photo Source: Mediaeater on Flickr.com

On Friday afternoon, after waiting for 45 minutes in the brisk chill of Fall in a line of people that wrapped around the corner of Prince and Greene, I secured a wristband that ensured that I would be one of the lucky spectators able to see The Decemberists perform inside the Apple Store in Soho as part of CMJ Music Marathon '06, an annual New York cornupcopia (or horn of plenty) of music and indie street cred. Finding the good fortune of not having any class that day, I took Gerald's advice and trekked down to Soho in hopes of sneaking a free peak at Colin Meloy and the rest of the gang since I couldn't afford their full show later that evening at Hammerstein Ballroom. Once inside, the few hundred of us shepherded up to the 2nd floor by Apple staff got to witness an intimate, 30-minute, acoustic-esque performance (including upright bass, violin, and an accordion!), a healthy mixture of old and new.

Upon introduction by an Apple representative, the band casually took their places with little fanfare, said brief hellos, and plunged right into "July July", a bouncy track from "Castaways and Cut-outs". Other tunes included "We Both Go Down Together", a classic Decemberist song about double-suicide, as well as "A Song for Myla Goldberg". For those unfamiliar with the band, they are best known for their uncanny storytelling capabilities, mostly due to the SAT-esque vocabulary of frontman Colin Meloy, whose dirges include such words as "pallanquin", "largesse", "parapets", and "coronets". And that's just from one song! ("The Infanta" from Picaresque) The band has a way of transporting the listener to another land, with much of their older albums qualifying as "sea-faring" or "maritime" for lack of better descriptors. Their new album, "The Crane Wife", marks their major label debut and is a fine addition to their already amazing catalogue. For this performance, they also performed three tracks from the new record, a stripped-down version of the dancy "The Perfect Crime 2", the upbeat "O Valencia" as the closer, and my personal favorite, "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Come Home Then)", which features dual male-female vocals, a musical technique that gets me everytime.

But, just like that, their set ended too quickly and we were thrust back into the chill of the outdoors, but not before I was handed a lanyard with a $100 iTunes giftcard attached for use in purchasing music from CMJ artists! $100 for listening to one of my favorite bands for free! America really IS the land of opportunity.

Finally, if you are intrigued to find out more about this wonderful band, you can do the obvious which is to check out the links I've included in this post, search Wikipedia, OR view the videos I've posted (courtesy of YouTube.com) to get a flavor of the musical stylings of The Decemberists (hint: I recommend option #3):

The Legionnaire's Lament