Colin Meloy
Colin Meloy Sings Live! (Kill Rock Stars)
By Erik Adams
Published: April 17th, 2008 | 3:16pm
There are some who would paint Colin Meloy as a pasty over-actor who is ruining left-of-center rock with his $20 words and prog-rock sensibilities. Those people are invited to jump down the gullet of the next-available whale so the rest of us can enjoy Colin Meloy Sings Live! in peace.
Inessential to anyone who's never been crushed by the last chorus of "The Engine Driver," Sings Live! finds Meloy sans the Decemberists. Instead, he’s traveling the wilds of 2006 with a more diverse menagerie — a stuffed sheep named Erick, a skull named Cheryl, and a model ship christened Maya Angelou — and repping an EP of Shirley Collins covers.
The main draw here is the return of the Meloy songbook to its basic elements of voice and guitar; already good Decemberists recordings like "On the Bus Mall" and "The Gymnast, High Above the Ground" get better with this opportunity for lyrical spelunking. Why will the narrator of "Bus Mall" not mourn for his partner in hustling? What is the connection between the "Red Right Ankle," your gypsy uncle, and the boys who loved you? These questions are easier to ponder without hurdy gurdy accompaniment.
Displaying a deft sense of humor on tracks appropriately titled "Banter,” Meloy even gets candid enough to share "Dracula's Daughter," one of two previously unreleased tracks (the other being the syrupy, we're having a baby ballad "Wonder”). Meloy calls "Dracula's Daughter" "the worst song I ever wrote" (Spoiler Alert: He's right).
Sings Live! functions best as a document of an experience. The definitive versions of these songs were captured in a recording studio. Haters may cry, "Cash-in!" to which I reply, "Shouldn't you be making friends with some small crustaceans?"
Issue #25
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