The Decemberists with Blind Pilot - LC Pavilion, 6-1

Conventional wisdom says that once a band jumps from an indie label up to the majors, the band satisfies its new corporation and larger audience with a more mainstream version of itself—something safe, with all the edges smoothed out. The Decemberists proved that notion false on 2006’s The Crane Wife as Colin Meloy, the band’s singer, songwriter and driving creative force, traded in some of his Brit-folk tendencies for a more grandiose vision, accompanying a bizarre Japanese legend with a (somewhat) unexpected dose of prog rock—keyboards, noodling guitars and all.

It wasn’t just a novelty experiment, either. The Portland band’s second outing on Capitol is this year’s The Hazards of Love, an audacious, ambitious, riff-heavy rock opera with a storyline about a woman named Margaret and her lover William, the son of a forest queen. There’s not an obvious single on the album; it plays more like one long song, titles merely indicating the tale’s progression. Not your typical major-label product.

Monday night at the LC Pavilion, the Decemberists played The Hazards of Love from start to finish, no breaks in between songs, no banter. For someone who wasn’t as familiar with Hazards going into the show, it felt a little lengthy and lacked some energy during the slower tunes. But for the most part, I was enthralled by the epicness of it all.

Meloy still has his Victorian Literature professor persona, but watching him was like realizing that not only does your nerdy college prof listen to Deep Purple and the Who, he can rip it up just like them, too, bounding around the stage pseudo-shredding and head-banging. And wow, the metal. The Decemberists threw in some rafter-shaking, low-end power (guitarist Chris Funk was a treat) that make you forget this band ever played folk ditties like “Eli, the Barrow Boy.” They’d never fit into Rock on the Range or anything (fortunately), but if this were the ’70s, people would just assume the Decemberists made sacrifices to Satan, or at least had an unhealthy obsession with Lord of the Rings.

Adding to the theatrics of it all were female singers Becky Stark (aka Lavender Diamond) and Shara Worden (aka My Brightest Diamond). Stark came out dressed in all white and accompanied her singing parts with flamboyant gestures and dancing, as did Worden, who stole the freakin’ show every single time she stepped up to the mic. Her manic stage moves were captivating, and her voice, oh man, her voice. During “The Wanting Comes in Waves,” as she belted out “Consider it your debt repaaaaid!” the whole crowd spontaneously cheered in admiration and excitement. I find Meloy’s affected, overly enunciated vocals mostly endearing, but Worden was still a welcome reprieve.

After The Hazards of Love was completed, the band took a long break before coming back to play favorites like “Leslie Anne Levine,” “We Both Go Down Together,” “16 Military Wives” and “Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then).” All sounded great, demonstrating the depth and diversity of the band’s catalog. Before the encore, Worden and Stark returned to the stage for Heart’s “Crazy on You,” a fun cover that may have been my favorite song of the night. It also made me really want to hear Worden front a real-deal rock ’n roll band—something a little less, er, arty, than My Brightest Diamond.

The band ended the show with “Sons & Daughters,” a song with wonderfully quirky instrumentation: bouzouki, accordion and hurdy-gurdy. As the crowd sang along to the refrain, “Hear all the bombs fade away,” it was a good reminder, along with “16 Military Wives,” that Meloy can do topical material (remember Iraq?) in addition to proggy tales of unrequited love and folky Civil War ghost stories. With the Decemberists, you can have your johnnycake and eat it, too.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t at least briefly mention opener Blind Pilot, also from Portland. Israel Nebeker’s buttery vocals sound even better live than on the band’s lovely folk-pop debut, 3 Rounds and a Sound. It’s probably a bit too breezy for those who only like the Decemberists at their most ELP, but Nebeker’s uncommonly good songwriting shouldn’t be ignored. Expect to hear lots more about these guys in the future.

More pics

My Brightest Diamond with Tim Fite, Wexner Center, 11-13

It will probably take awhile for Shara Worden, singer/songwriter for My Brightest Diamond, to live down the fact that she toured with Sufjan Stevens as one of his Illinoisemakers. Stevens has become too big of a name not to mention it, and the tour is how Worden began to make a name for herself. But judging from the show at the Wexner Center Tuesday night, Worden can fill a stage on her own just fine.

With a voice like hers, touring as merely a background singer for other bands would be a colossal waste of her talent, which was meant to be showcased in the Wex’s minimalist performance space in the context of a three-piece band, as opposed to Stevens’s traveling orchestra. Worden played her semi-hollow-body guitar gingerly at times and aggressively at others while her excellent drummer held down the vacillating beats and the bassist established the groove. But the tastefully simple instrumentation was merely window dressing for what everyone came to hear--Worden’s voice. It was pitch-perfect, veering from rock to jazz to soul to opera, ethereal at times and raucous at others.

Worden has studied opera, and it shows. Yet, she’s also a Nina Simone fan, and that shows, too. The versatility of her singing allows her to pull off all sorts of vocal theatrics, from trembles to yelps to whispers, often within the same song. It was apparent by the covers she played, as well: “It’s Over” by Roy Orbison, “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone and “Tainted Love,” made famous by Soft Cell. They all sounded as good, if not better, than the My Brightest Diamond originals, which drew from the 2006 debut, Bring Me the Workhorse.

For some reason, Tim Fite is touring with My Brightest Diamond. His music can best be described as folk-rap, but the style changes drastically from song to song. It’s not even close to the same genre as My Brightest Diamond, and the pairing felt forced. Still, Fite’s an entertainer with a boisterous sense of humor who played in front of a video screen that mostly showed himself playing guitar and singing along to the songs. Fite looks like a younger Paul Giamatti, and decked out in seersucker pants with suspenders, he displays endless energy. The more rap-leaning tunes worked the best with all the pre-recorded loops, and “It’s All Right Here,” a rant against consumerism, was the true highlight of the set. The humor outside of the songs, such as a story about a rat named Juice who had an orange-scented hiney, didn’t work as well, and Fite’s sidekick didn’t help; he felt the need to explain jokes and chatter nonstop.

More photos on the Flickr page. (Not the best shots this time around, unfortunately.)