The Decemberists really were meant for the stage

Anything from last year's "Crane Wife" of course got the packed Pabst in an uproar and, eventually, Mr. Meloy morphed into the showman he'd claimed he was. He praised the city -- saying something to the effect of thinking it looked like Munich -- as well as the theater, and seemed genuinely pleased to be playing in a city he'd avoided for the entirely of his musical career.

And the love was nothing if not returned -- it was hard to hear much of his dialogue over the hordes of women, and a few men, screaming, "I love you" down to the stage. The adoration was halted only temporarily after Meloy's playful comment about Wisconsinites suffering from a lack of aerobic activity. Of course, the accusation was met with "boos" though it was obviously just a set up for his mid-show calisthenics session -- an adorable routine led by Meloy that had the entire ground floor doing knee squats, arm raises and jumping. Admittedly, the seating prohibited most people from following his lead and lying on the ground and kick their legs in the air -- but that's not to say they didn't try.

A few sympathetic words about yesterday's Virginia Tech tragedy found Meloy explaining that violence is only meant for fiction and soon had the crowd chanting the closing phase of "Sons and Daughters," "let all the bombs fade away..."

The set ended with the absence of anything from arguably the band's biggest album, 2005's "Picaresque," but the 15-minute encore rendition of "The Mariner's Revenge" was nothing short of a theatrical experience that left us in awe of what a perfect marriage The Decemberists have with the stage.

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Posted by thewaz on April 17, 2007 at 1:59 p.m. (report)

its a shame they had to play anything from the crane wife, i hope they had the giant whale like tehy did in NC and GA

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