The Decemberists

I went and saw The Decemberists play with The Long Winters last week at the Gothic Theater. I had never been to the Gothic before. It's a pretty nice place to see a small show. It's smaller, cleaner, and newer than the Bluebird, but it has that same kind of general feel only in Littleton and not on Colfax.

I had previously downloaded four or five Long Winters songs, but I didn't realize that until after the concert, so I didn't know much about what to expect. The promo for the show said, "Singer/songwriter John Roderick has been tagged as an indie version of R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe." Any indie version of REM and Stipe??!? Do they forget who built the college rock scene in America? OK, so it wasn't just REM, but to put these guys as somehow "more indie" than REM kind of made me laugh - or reminisce or something...

Turns out that the statement is a bit of hyperbole too. The band was good and some of the songs flat out rocked and were really good (notably, their opening tune, Stupid). Unfortunately though, some of the other songs were just mediocre. These guys will probably eventually end up with one big song from a soundtrack or something, but I doubt that they will ever be big rock stars. Maybe they are just too young as a band and eventually they'll crank out hit after hit, but I just don't see it yet.

Go here to download Stupid and Car Parts which I also thought was quite good. (I'm listening now to Blue Diamonds. It's pretty good too. Scent of Lime bores me.

The Decemberists were very good. Collin Molloy, the singer and leader, has sort of a funny voice when he talks. And he is short. But the music was great. I thought the set could have been about three songs longer, but it was definitely a good show. I bought a teeshirt and the new EP.

The new EP, Tain, kind of annoys me. It has three or four different songs but it is all done as one piece and one track. I have no clue why they did such a thing. The music on it is good however.

Standing in the crowd at the show, I kept looking around at everyone's wrists. I was looking to see if there were any lovely ladies for whom I might purchase a cocktail. (I had just enough booze and other motivation that I thought I just might try even as it is quite out of my normal character.) Lots of cute girls, but few seemed to be of age. As I studied the crowd a bit, I decided that there were basically two groups of people there: highschool kids and highschool English teachers. I laughed aloud and then cringed when it struck me which set I most obviously resembled.

Jonathan 6/09/2004 11:53:00 AM