Even their most ardent cheerleaders had to admit The Decemberists were close to jumping the shark with 2009’s over-baked concept-slathered Hazards Of Love, wherein Colin Meloy’s penchant for 14th century diction and songcycles about merrie lads did plungeth down a sinkhole of self-parody.
Reversing course just as they were on the brink of pastiche, the brainiac Oregonians regrouped on this year’s The King Is Dead. Swapping folksy amblings and dead-end baroque curlicues for REM-worthy chugging and dueling mandolins, the record reminded you how great a songwriter Meloy could be when he allowed himself be guided by his basest rock instincts rather than the labyrinthine machinations of his higher brain.
At a sell-out Vicar St. though, it isn’t REM who loom largest but Amish-pop uberlords Arcade Fire. Standing all in a row, Meloy and his rag-tag of drummers, violinists, keyboard-players and guitarists come on like professorial elder siblings of Butler’s puritan crew. At full tilt, their music is almost as folk-ishly cathartic – no less than four members pound drums on the Chaucer-goes-prog ‘Rake’s Tale’; for King Is Dead standout out ‘Down By The Water’, they ratchet up the swell so that it crashes down upon the audience with briny abandon. They can carry off quiet triumphs too: ‘16 Military Wives’ climaxes in Meloy and the audience trading hushed ooh and aaahs, before the band pitch in with a freewheeling campfire tumult. They may be the brainiest brand in indie, but tonight The Decemberists show they can play gloriously dumb as well as anybody else.