Here’s what you need to know about The Decemberists playing The Hazards of Love in its entirety on their current tour: on prog-rock bulletin boards, folks are comparing this show to Genesis performing The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway in the 1970s.

Hazards of Love sounds awfully proggy on record, and live it’s got all the telltale signs: a theatrical presentation (including costumes of sorts), a ridiculously fantastical concept/storyline, lots of Hammond organ and other keys, a gratuitously long children’s choir section… everything to make the latent prog fan inside you start drooling. And the thing is, it works. Before last night I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the album, but its highlights are exhilirating in the live setting, especially those featuring the powerhouse vocals of My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden. Set the absurd concept aside and the music stands on its own remarkably well.

More photos and thoughts after the jump. Full gallery here.

Read More “Photos: The Decemberists @ Merriweather Post Pavilion” »

The Decemberists’ new folk-rock opera, The Hazards of Love, traces a well-worn arc: Boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, boy loses girl to spawnicidal rake, rake is besieged by ghosts of his murdered children, boy gets girl back, boy and girl drown in turbulent metaphorical river.

Like we’ve never heard that one before.

Read More “Record Review: The Decemberists’ Hazards of Love” »

On the way to Austin I listened to a George Carlin comedy album, not sure which one it was. “White people have no business playing the blues. They give people the blues, they have no business playing them,” he said.

Carlin’s words came back into my mind while watching Heartless Bastards perform at Stubbs Bar-B-Que. Surely this was a situation that he would have appreciated, an all-white blues band chugging away beneath the looming visage of a scowling black man.

But while this scene had some serious Blues Hammer-elements going on, I’m not sure I completely believe Carlin. Heartless Bastards was pretty good. Erika Wennerstrom had an appropriately leathery voice, and they played a heavier and moodier set than I would have expected from a band sitting on a bill with the Decemberists.