Colin Meloy
w/Corrina Repp
Thurs Jan 13, Triple Door, $14, 8 pm.
Whether it’s the Scrabble-board scholastics or the English-lit theme lifting, you can bet that the reason people are so drawn to the Decemberists has a great deal to do with frontman and wordsmith Colin Meloy. Sure, the band’s live presentation makes it impossible to ignore the theatrics–stage costumed whimsically, fancifully, ridiculously. But when it really comes down to it, what fuels the Decemberists’ Victorian vision–a vision that has propelled the Portland band into the national spotlight–is less about their music’s theater, and more plainly rooted in the clunky confines of language. Or more clearly: It’s really all about the words.
It stands to reason, then, that the band’s songs would be all the more effective in a stripped-down, solo acoustic setting–a notion on which Meloy is banking with his selective solo tour. “[The solo concept] grew out of these talks we were having with the guy from Dashboard Confessional,” says Meloy, who is releasing a new Decemberists record this year. “[He] wanted to put together this solo tour with the two of us and another guy–which I know sounds really bizarre. I was a little leery about going out with Dashboard Confessional, even though that guy’s really nice.” Meloy backed out, instead booking a short West Coast run himself. “The first year I was in Portland,” he explains, “pretty much all I did was play solo in small clubs, and this was an effort to come back to that.”