I wanted to hate this album. I had made a preliminary decision to do so after seeing the cover art, a cloyingly amateurish looking drawing of Meloy emblazoned by the album’s title (which seemed to be a too-cutesy retro faux-Vegas thing) in decadent Olde Time(e)y font. The little devil on my shoulder (who looks like John Malkovich, BTW) at this point started hissing terrible little egging-ons into my ear in that droll, effeminate lisp that made Johnny Malk America’s sweetheart (fun fact: did you know Malkovich was one of the producers of Juno? Which is kind of like Robert Duvall producing Sixteen Candles. I can just imagine him watching the rough cut and saying “it’s good, but it needs more overbearing, a-tonal anti-folk.”). “Yes Michael…feel the hate grow inside you, this is the kind of over-art-ified trash adored by the kind of people who for some reason think they identify with Kevin Spacey’s character in American Beauty, find a way to work the words ‘independent film’ into ordinary conversation at least once every day, spend their free time taking really up-close, zoomed ‘photographs’ of flowers and shit and put quotes from Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind on their Myspace profiles when everybody knows Adaptation is the superior Charlie Kaufman-penned movie.”

All of which is, of course, probably true.

But once I gave this sucker a listen I discovered that it was kind of impossible to resist Meloy’s throwaway charm and light-hearted self-deprecation. He evokes the mythical quality of being the kind of guy who doesn’t seem like much by looking at him but after a couple of minutes in conversation you’ll end up waking up the next morning next to him in bed, regardless of your sex, orientation or political/religious beliefs.

Meloy is alone on stage (save for the company of  a skull named “Cheryl” a little ship named “Maya Angelou” and a sheep named “Eric With A ‘K’” which Meloy introduces in one of the mostly humorous, but sort of aggravating pieces of banter) armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar and his hyper-literacy. He plays a room-filling strum that resembles The Decemberists’ more popish numbers which, given his solo-ness, plays to his advantage. Meloy mostly sticks to Decemberists tunes, he does use some material from his old band Tarkio (Devil’s Elbow and…shit I dunno, something else maybe) but there is a disappointing lack of fresh material (Dracula’s Daughter). He also throws in Smiths and Fleetwood Mac covers (Ask and Dreams, respectively) as parts of medleys, and the old Shirley Collins song Barbara Allen (don’t worry, non-British folk revival fans, he explains just who that person is).

The medleys lose a little bit due to a bit of a lack of focus and extended guitar jams, but Barbara Allen is effectual and a little powerful (in a “droll-Oregonian-doing-British-folk-revival” kinda way). And the majority of the Decemberists songs hit a good mark, particularly We Both Go Down Together and A Cautionary Song (which just so happen to be the two that get the biggest initial audience response, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not). The Gymnast, High Above Ground sort of loses itself inside itself and Dracula’s Daughter is a spectacular kind of failure, which is okay, since it’s supposed to be.  

But let’s just call a spade a spade here, if you like The Decemberists then odds are you’ll like this (unless you’re some sort of Chris Funk fetishist) and if you don’t, you won’t. I do, kinda.

Release date: 07/04/2008
Artist website: www.myspace.com/colinmeloy
Label: Rough Trade

(0) comments - discuss in the forum