w/Mason Jennings, Memphis Radio Kings

Fri April 25, Crocodile, 8 pm, $12 adv/$14 DOS.

The language of lyric is always that much more impressive when it comes from the voice of a laureate--a Cohen, a Cave, a Morrissey--who yields the limited power of the pop song like a bitter dagger. But for every prophetic pop lyricist there's 8,000 sensitive, bespectacled waifs whining and wailing about youth and beauty. Somewhere in between lies the famously longwinded Colin Meloy, vocalist and main songwriter of Portland's thesaurian quintet the Decemberists. Meloy wears his creative writing degree on his sleeve, mapping intricate allegories of the historical and absurd: Legionnaires, whores, Chinese trapeze artists, and the narrating ghosts of dead babies coexist in the relative harmony of Meloy's elaborate fables--a European Lit-major syntax whined in polarizingly nasal tenor.

In operation for about three years, the Decemberists evolved from Meloy's solo work to self-release the recently reissued 5 Songs EP in 2001, and the subsequent full-length on Portland's Hush Records, a beautifully baroque marvel called Castaways and Cutouts (soon to be re-released on Kill Rock Stars). The records mine familiar sonic territory--from Neutral Milk Hotel to Robyn Hitchcock--all verbose sea shanties and Appalachian twang.

A comfortably confident folk groundwork serves its master effectively, but it's blindingly clear who's in ultimate control here: The Decemberists love the words. Words like "ubiquitous." It's language that propels their familiar structures, fusing their music's ordinary beauty with Meloy's romantic narratives into sleepy, calligraphed fairy tales. His legends are compelling in their elaborate wordplay and vision, though knowingly detached and often entirely absurd. There's a certain pretense to all of that verbiage--a burdensome weight of language that is sure to turn off more than a few listeners--but in the heady breezes of spring, the Decemberists' poetry is soothing music to amorous ears.