The Decemberists @ Radio City Music Hall

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Friday, 12 June 2009 15:01

Radio City Music Hall has a draconian curfew. It is strictly enforced. Set times are not approximate, which is how—after arriving what would be only a little bit late for a normal club show—I almost completely missed the supporting act, Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3.

The looming deadline for the show's end only inspired The Decemberists to perform two ultra-compact sets. For the first, the band played its newest album, The Hazards of Love, in its entirety. Since Hazards is an ambitious prog-rock opera, this doesn't leave much room for screwing around to begin with. Yet the band managed to somehow make it even sharper, playing through the entire album without taking breaks between songs—and at a pace that was perhaps a little bit faster than the record. Sometimes, this left them only seconds to switch or renegotiate their instruments. "Tight" is a word that's thrown around a lot to describe shows, but this one was more than tight—it was a well-oiled machine.

The machine added a few new moving parts: Shara Worden of My Brightest Diamond and Becky Stark of Lavender Diamond reprised their roles from the album on stage. Somehow, they managed to strike the right balance between rock concert and musical theater. Worden especially stood out—though her part was showier (in the context of the album, she was some kind of evil forest witch), her energy reached up to the highest tiers of the Music Hall. After a short break, the band returned for a second set of non-Hazard material, and though Worden and Stark weren't around for much of it, they did pop up for a cover of Heart's "Crazy on You," which turned out to be one of the highlights of the evening. The women took to the Heart song like they could sing it in their sleep.

Though frontman Colin Meloy promised that he wouldn't talk much so there could be "more rock" before the curfew, the second set was far looser. There was plenty of goofing off, including splitting the theater into four-part harmonies for the end of "Billy Liar." (Believe me, it took a lot of rehearsing.) Meloy also noted that Radio City usually inspires artists to trot out their best material, but instead it made him want to perform a bit of the worst song he's ever written ("Dracula's Daughter"), with between-line explanations of what made it so "douchey." In a final bit of nonsense, he pulled up two audience members to be dueling guitars for an extended breakdown in "The Chimbley Sweep." Only one of the participants actually knew how to play guitar (the other faked it admirably), and Meloy disappeared into the audience for a time while they took center stage.

Still, even with all of the playfulness, Meloy packed a lot of bright spots into that second set, including even faster, harder-rocking versions of "July, July" an "O Valencia." For an encore, REM's Peter Buck joined the band on stage for a quick cover of "Begin the Begin," then the evening closed with a sing-along version of "Sons and Daughters." And yes, even with all of that, the concert ended right on time.

Words by Marisa LaScala