Review: The Decemberists, O2 Academy

Twenty years on from your debut release is a tricky point for even the most inventive and enduring of rock acts. The brightest stars were showing distinct signs of wavering at this stage in their glittering careers—Bowie was knocking out, Never Let Me Down, Pink Floyd producing A Momentary Lapse of Reason, and Dylan fans were struggling to get their heads around the likes of Empire Burlesque. These newer records had none of the invention, wit or mystery of the earlier classics, and even the most loyal of followers realised these were no Ziggy or Heroes, no Piper at the Gates of Dawn and certainly no Highway 61 or Blonde on Blonde.

Portland’s The Decemberists find themselves at exactly such a junction in their career as they arrive at Bristol’s O2 Academy on the back of their eighth album, I’ll Be Your Girl. The band became a critic’s favourite in the late 2000s thanks to their dark, complex prog folk albums, The Crane Wife and Hazards of Love, which found themselves on countless end-of-year ‘best of’ lists. This was Anglophile college rock expecting a good grade in its end of term English lit exam. Lengthy song suites about ghosts and whales abounded, well-read lyrics married to finely chiselled melodies.

Any band at this point in their career has to change to try to keep things fresh and to avoid the dulling repetition of the successful formula of earlier albums. The Decemberists have evolved into something less ornate, more direct and found influences in the 80s synth pop of New Order rather than the 60s/70s folk rock of Jethro Tull or Fairport Convention. In doing so it feels they have lost some of their mystery, some of their uniqueness.

Tonight’s setlist was heavily populated with songs from I’ll Be Your Girl, whilst still finding room for some choice cuts from their back pages. Although their new material maintains their trademark lyrical darkness (a quote from The Smiths’ Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want dropped into one of tonight’s encores feels more than at home), often this is coupled to incessant 80s synth riffs, Peter Hook basslines and nods to the golden days of glam rock. Tonight’s audience happily sing along to new song Sucker’s Prayer, and warm to the jaunty glam riff of We All Die Young and the equally upbeat Everything is Awful. There is still fine writing here, just not of the shattering horror set to a beautiful tune of Shankhill Butchers or the literate power of The Rake’s Song, both delightfully played tonight.

They are still a more than impressive and versatile musical combo effortlessly switching from the Byrdsian swagger of classic REM, to contrasting gentler, proggy moments and to back up singer Kelly Hogan’s showcase on a rock opera, guitar heavy interlude that wouldn’t have felt out of place in We Will Rock You. Colin Malloy is a likeable frontman. The sort of rock star you can take home to meet your mother maybe, but a charismatic presence none the less. He gets his, now statutory, apology for Trump in early and the audience are eating out of his hand from there.

They were warmly received by tonight’s packed audience and rightfully so. It will be interesting to see where this most literate and unique of bands finds itself next, and whether the mystery and ambition of their great albums can be rediscovered in a new context for another time.