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Atlanta welcomed The Decemberists for their final stop on their Arise From the Bunkers tour at Tabernacle with an all but sold-out audience. It’s been four years since the band toured, and the tour title accounts for a certain pandemic delaying their Intended 20th anniversary tour two additional years.
What the band would play could be anybody’s guess as their setlist has changed from stop to stop, pulling from their career-spanning eight studio albums and other releases. It began with the familiar, “The Infanta,” followed by “July, July!” and “The Calamity Song.” Well, there you go, the party’s on, with an audience sing-along chorus on “Sucker’s Prayer.”
Good time for Jenny Conlee to pull out the accordion (with great applause, to which Meloy remarked “an Atlanta need alert.”) Oh, and why not intro a new song, “Burial Ground?” This song very much has an easy to enjoy song structure and style ala The King is Dead. The lyrics are fun, too, suggestive but obtuse enough to invite your own meaning.
Here among the fallen leaves
Are we alone the ones that dare to breathe?
Throw your worries down
They’re all so gravely held
You have carried them so well
The band slowed things a bit with “Riverswim,” a more obscure song from an EP, but it’s one of those songs that captures the band’s gift for surrounding a lyric with suitable music, in this case the nuance of an electric guitar’s tremolo shining through.
And, to my mind, what followed was the centerpiece of the show, “The Wanting Comes in Waves / Repaid” a proggy narrative/character dialogue with requisite musical chops that band members clearly enjoyed. Touring member Lizzie Ellison… wow. Her backing vocals already shone complementing Meloy’s voice, but here her lead vocals for the female character simply elevated the piece.
This was followed by a lengthy instrumental intro to “Severed” delivered similarly, featuring a fine guitar solo by Chris Funk. After these two lengthy songs, Meloy commented that it was an “ambitious” setlist, and those two songs added plenty of heat to an already hot and humid Atlanta night. Meloy commented, amid other band members fanning themselves, it was a “sweaty rock show.” Worth it!
“Down by the River” soon followed, clearly a fan favorite as the crowd sang along, perhaps enough to end the calls for “Dear Avery” which wasn’t to be. By way of introduction to “O Valencia,” the band played an off-the-cuff(ish) musical bit called “Dracula’s Daughter,” which a little research shows Meloy regards as “the worst song he has ever written” and remains unrecorded. So, a special treat for the end of the tour?
Dracula’s daughter
Dracula’s daughter
Dracula’s daughter got it bad
You think you got it bad
Try having Dracula as your dad
See how it looks on you.
The merriment continued with the crowd joining in on the chorus of “O Valencia!” and pretty much the entirety of the set closer, “I Was Meant for the Stage.” The Decemberist’s lyrics aren’t complex, but it takes a certain literate type to write them, and speaks to the crowd that they invested the time over the years to know so many of the lyrics. The band left the stage in faux-demolished condition, with a ringing guitar by an amp, another on a keyboard, cymbals and tambourine tossed to the front of the stage, and seats overturned. What no encore? Hardly. ‘Twas just a few minutes work for the Tech crew.
The encore was good, but unusual that it included a new song, “William Fitzwilliam” amongst the three songs. “Ben Franklin’s Song,” a collaboration between Meloy and Lin-Manuel Miranda, followed with appropriate energy for an f* word fueled song, which of course, also invited crowd participation for the chorus. “Sons and Daughters” closed the evening, with the audience singing “here all the bombs fade away” to fade the evening into black. Or, house lights.
Overall, it was a splendid summary of their career to date and their abilities today. However the band fared in their return to the rigors of touring, it was clear that they intended to celebrate afterwards, as they should.
Setlist:
Encore:
