For no other reason than because they can, The Decemberists have taken to the road in 2022 for a tour they’ve dubbed, “Arise from the Bunkers!” The name is of course a reference to how global affairs stymied every band’s touring ambitions in 2020 and most of 2021, including the Portland, Oregon-based sextet’s desire to celebrate their 20th anniversary. Now, finally able to realize their aim, seeing the band’s equipment onstage makes one realize how big of a production it must be to tour – they take up most of the sizeable stage area at Boston’s Roadrunner, and dwarf opening act Jake Xerxes Fussell who sits at the center with just a guitar and amp. The Decemberists have a wealth of influences, and their ever-morphing sound seems to have found them collecting a couple of new instruments for each album cycle, resulting in this vast collection of gear used to summon the many sounds of their past records.
The band’s penchant for instrumental variety matches with their love of elaborate storytelling, a hallmark of their style that, anchored by singer Colin Meloy’s one-of-a-kind timbre, saw them emerge weaving baroque and gorgeous folk tales, often set during or inspired by historical events and iconography, as is the band’s name. The band opens with ‘The Infanta’, which is a perfect example of this style, a portrayal of a royal procession liable to send those not well-acquainted with historical terminology to Wikipedia or at least a dictionary across its five verses. The song hails from their 2004 album Picaresque, but soon they’re looking back even further in time to their first EP, from which they draw ‘Shiny’, which Meloy smiles and refers to as “the sounds of 2001”. ‘Shiny’ is the first song of the night to find keyboardist Jenny Conlee taking up the accordion, but certainly not the last – and that’s one of no less than four keyed instruments she plays throughout the evening. In fact, most of the band are multi-instrumentalists: bassist Nate Query switching between an electric bass guitar and an upright bass, guitarist Chris Funk occasionally taking a seat at his pedal steel, and Meloy himself having a selection of acoustic and electric options.
At the polar opposite end of the temporal spectrum, the band reveals ‘Burial Ground’, a “brand new” track that they’ve only brought out for the Arise from the Bunkers tour. It’s a “song about death… or dying,” Meloy says, though without the clarifying statement that it’s new, that designation could refer to a wealth of songs in the Decemberists’ catalog, including the one they play next, ‘Sucker’s Prayer’, which he clarifies is actually more about wanting to die than about dying itself – still an odd impetus for one of many singalong moments throughout the set. Next comes ‘The Sporting Life’, a.k.a. “the semi-autobiographical material”, which to a drum beat reminiscent of Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust for Life’ recounts the tale of a narrator who turns out to not quite be the athlete his father, coach, and peers might have hoped.
The next section of the night winds up being quite the showcase for “sixth Decemberist” Lizzy Ellison – she duets with Meloy on ‘Yankee Bayonet’, and soon after takes on the role of Queen, one of the characters in the band’s most thoroughly-unique album, The Hazards of Love. Beginning with a haunting organ line from Conlee, ‘The Wanting Comes in Waves’ is a scene pulled from the rock opera that chronicles the tragic tale of a shapeshifting prince, his human paramour, the prince’s controlling Queen mother, and a villain in her employ who has, let’s say, quite a negative attitude toward parenthood.
The Decemberists have always been a literary, often outright nerdy band, but this concept album from 2009 found them genuinely making the heaviest work of their career to this day, something that belongs in the metal canon as much as folk, particularly when the Queen speaks; Ellison is accompanied by huge guitars that swing back and forth menacingly like the pendulum of fate during the parts of ‘Repaid’ that weaves through ‘Wanting’ at the same time. While the album proved divisive critically at the time, it remains one of the band’s most powerful, enduring statements; a daring Shakespearean tale that took the best aspects of the band’s style to their limits, while simultaneously bringing in unexpected turns that expanded the notion of what a Decemberists album could be. The band actually treated Boston to an impromptu full-album performance of Hazards last time they were in town in 2018.
Keeping with the louder, darker tone of this song, the band next plays the threatening ‘Severed’, the most forceful cut from their most recent album I’ll Be Your Girl. Meloy and Funk are both on electric guitar here, and Conlee’s synths combine with the steady timing of drummer John Moen to create the underscoring menace that’s infused in the song. Meloy and company keep their focus on newer material for a bit from here with the singalong ‘We All Die Young’ and heartbroken ‘Make You Better’, but for the close of the main set they look back to their inaugural LP. ‘I Was Meant for the Stage’ is a return to the semi-autobiographical, half a genuine profession of irreplaceable love for the art of performance, but also a sarcastic send-up of grandiose figures who view the audience’s lives as “callow” compared to their own divinely-inspired occupation. Reaching the conclusion of the song, Meloy lies down on those very boards in front of his amp, bending his guitar forward to create a feedback loop, then rises and tosses his pick into the crowd – as anyone meant for the stage would.
Not unpredictable from such a theatrically-minded group, they return for an encore, one that closes with ‘Sons & Daughters’, from which the imperative to “arise from the bunkers” is taken. It’s a quintessential Decemberists song – driven forward by a bouncy acoustic guitar and swelling accordion, containing the word “dirigible”, and actually designed to be sung in a round; the band splits up their starting points midway through the song. The night ends in one final moment where everyone sings the final refrain in unison: “hear all the bombs fade away” – a sign that once again it’s time to reemerge, and that they have: thousands assembled to hear this music that so unconventionally and beautifully marries the modern with antiquity.
Review and Photos by Collin Heroux
