Photo: WENN
"When we give you the signal, we want you to scream like you're being eaten by a whale," chuckles Colin Meloy, returning for a second encore with a tale of olde worlde maritime disaster. "Is everyone doing that now? Kasabian asked you to do that, didn't they?"
But a Kasabian show, this is not. Of all the bands capable of filling Brixton Academy on a Saturday night, none can do it quite like The Decemberists. At one point, Meloy curses the crowd for their delighted response to 'The Rake's Song': "That's a terrible song, it's a song about infanticide - you should be ashamed of yourselves."
As showcased moreso than ever on their astounding seventh album, The Decemberists are much more than a band - they're an adventure in fiction. Tonight, with the unlikliest of anthems, they use song to take Brixton outside of time and place to a world of their own - and what a beautiful world it is.
Whether it's the elegiac march of 'Cavalry Captain', the call-to-arms hoe-down of 'Calamity Song', the lamentful portrait 'Grace Cathedral Anthem' or the love-lorn pining of 'Make You Better', there's a three-dimensional projection to these stories that sees The Decemberists open their hearts and fill the venue with life. '16 Military Wives' takes the tragedy that comes with "American Imperialism" and turns it into an ecstatic sing-along, while the classic Romeo & Juliet-esque tale of love overcoming the hatred of two families (but resulting in death) in the wistfully infectious 'O Valenica!' sees fists-pumping and arms aloft in a manner no one else could pull off.
'12/17/12', a lesson in loving those around you at the sight of others grieving, has more than a few choked up in a sombre sway, before the band return for a rather unexpected second encore with 'The Mariner's Revenge Song' - an epic gypsy-folk odyssey about treacherous times at sea, told from within the belly of a whale. It's the perfect embodiment of all that's great about this band: a celebration of the extraordinary.
The only real criticism is that so rich is their back catalogue, that it perversely works to their detriment. There's no way they can possibly shoehorn 'Billy Liar', 'July July', 'Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect', 'A June Hymn', 'Shiny', 'The Infanta' and all three parts of 'The Crane Wife' into tonight's set without breaking curfew or demanding oxygen tanks.
However, with a set that traces the DNA of their all-encompassing fiction, through to the highly-evolved and more personal flourishes of their latter work, The Decemberists artfully prove that no one else can do this. This is their world, and it's a pleasure and privilege to inhabit it.
The Decemberists played:
The Singer Addresses His Audience
Cavalry Captain
Down by the Water
Calamity Song
Grace Cathedral Hill
Philomena
The Wrong Year
The Island
Los Angeles, I'm Yours
Carolina Low
A Bower Scene
Won't Want for Love (Margaret in the Taiga)
The Rake's Song
Make You Better
The Legionnaire's Lament
16 Military Wives
O Valencia!
Encore:
12/17/12
A Beginning Song
Encore 2:
The Mariner's Revenge Song
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