[Photo by AutumnDeWilde]
Now that last night’s Decemberists show at the Tower is safely over, we are allowed to share the following: The Decemberists will be headlining the Saturday afternoon concert at the Philadelphia Folk Festival on Saturday, August 15. Other newly added acts include The Derek Trucks Band (closing Sunday night’s Martin Guitar Stage), Heartless Bastards, Austin Lucas, Kerri Powers, Shannon Lambert-Ryan and RUNA, as well as locals the West Philadelphia Orchestra and Burning Bridget Cleary. MORE
PREVIOUSLY ON PHAWKER: Amongst people who like that sort of thing, Colin Meloy — ringleader of the Portland-based folk-pop collective The Decemberists – is the most satisfyingly literary songwriter to emerge from the most recent crop of indie-rock luminaries. Others find his tune-smithing to be cloying and contrived, like an English class apple-shiner who always makes sure his essay question answers incorporate alliteration and onomatopoeia, and at least three examples of simile and metaphor, just because he can. A bookish, blocky man with an owlish countenance and the physique of a chatroom habitue, Meloy writes songs that could best be described as historic pulp-fiction, a faux-remembrance of all things past, usually set in some exotic milieu, an ante-bellum romance here, a sepia-toned Dickensian character study there. The Decemberists are like the kids from Western Civ. class who, when we break off into discussion groups, stage a hootenanny of historically-accurate sea chanteys and cheerful murder ballads. MORE