The Decemberists

January 24, 2011 — January 26, 2011 at Beacon Theatre

About the Show

Led by Helena, MT, native Colin Meloy, Portland, OR's The Decemberists craft theatrical, hyper-literate pop songs that draw heavily from late-'60s British folk acts like Fairport Convention and Pentangle and the early-'80s college rock grandeur of The Waterboys and R.E.M. The band's initial lineup also included drummer Ezra Holbrook, bassist Nate Query, keyboardist/accordionist Jenny Conlee, and multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk. Frontman Meloy had previously devoted some time to an alternative country group before breaking off to pursue his craft as a singer/songwriter in the city of Portland, a move that eventually led to The Decemberists' formation. Drawing influence from his degree in creative writing, he began fashioning a hybrid of literate lyrics and wide-ranging pop music, touching upon everything from Sandy Denny to Morrissey in the process.

Life as a musician means continual evolution. Over the course of a career, any band worth paying attention to will pursue a sound, a direction, until it triggers a different idea and they're chasing some other distant dream. With their sixth album, The King Is Dead, The Decemberists illustrate the power that comes from this kind of creative call-and-response.

Meloy points out, however, that creating straightforward, unadorned songs can be at least as hard as building complicated musical epics. ''For all my talk about how complex those records were, this one may have been harder to do,'' he says. ''It's a real challenge to make simple music, and lot of times we had to deliberately hold off and keep more space. This record is an exercise in restraint.''

For all of the album's shift in musical direction, though, The King Is Dead is still clearly a Decemberists album, especially in the usage of imagery taken from landscapes, plants, and ''ater throughout the lyrics. ''The syntax of The Decemberists is definitely still there,'' says Meloy. ''I didn?t want it to be too much of a departure. But where the nature motifs were more mystical on The Hazards of Love, the flora of this record are more of a pastoral backdrop.''