Caught in the Carousel

Colin Meloy

Colin Meloy Sings Live!
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Like Mark Eitzel's 1991 Songs of Love, Colin Meloy's Colin Meloy Sings Live! is a stripped down affair that plainly displays the musician's songwriting acumen. Eitzel came without his band (American Music Club), arming himself with only an acoustic guitar and Meloy does the same, leaving the Decemberists at home and opting, as he puts it for a "campfire sing-a-long." To extend Meloy's merry metaphor, Colin Meloy Sings Live! is a perfect place to pitch a tent. A career spanning fourteen-song collection (the recordings of which are winnowed from his 2006 solo tour), Meloy plays an old number from his first band Tarkio (the Hopper-esque "Devil's Elbow"), Decemberists' classics ("We Both Go Down Together") and new material ("Dracula's Daughter") that's as good as anything he's ever done. Like an indie rock history professor, or a post-punk Hemmingway, Meloy holds court with tales of gymnasts, seamen, and wayward Spaniards and effortlessly compressed into three-minute vignettes, his tales bring his subjects to vivid life. Too many highlights here to mention them all, but especially noteworthy are the always fine "The Engine Driver," a wrenching rendition of "The Bachelor And The Bride" and "The Gymnast, High Above The Ground." Like Eitzel on Songs of Love, Meloy is a man caught here at the height of his powers. But while Eitzel's live set was so wrenching it sounded like it took years off his life, Colin Meloy Sings Live!—though not without its poignant and profound moments—is much more playful and whimsical affair. Meloy's between song banter, which ranges from a quick head-banging crowd experiment to a mini-lecture on the history of Shirley Collins is personable and engaging. And his musical detours are unexpected and marvelous—"Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect" morphs into Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams," while the epic twelve-minute "California One/Youth And Beauty Brigade" closes with a snippet of The Smiths' "Ask." Meloy is a rare talent-a singer/songwriter with real intelligence, rolling choruses that take all the corners smoothly and a seemingly endless supply of stories to tell. We're lucky to have him.

-- Alex Green