Karen Ponzio Photos
The Decemberists' Colin Meloy ...
... and opening act Ratboys, at College St. Music Hall.
The Decemberists brought May to a magnificent start on Saturday night when they returned to College Street Music Hall for the fourth show of their 2024 A Peaceable Kingdom North American tour.
Fans filled the room from floor to balcony, up the stairs and to the edges of the stage barrier, to bask in the multicolored hues of the lights and lofty sounds of some of their favorites, mixed in with new material from the band’s aptly titled upcoming album As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again.
Ratboys.
Ratboys, the Chicago-based band that also performed locally at Space Ballroom one month ago, joined the Decemberists on Saturday and will be with them for most of this tour. The four members — Julia Steiner on vocals and guitar, Dave Sagan on guitar, Sean Neumann on bass and vocals, and Marcus Nuccio on drums — settled in for a 40-minute set that amped up the energy for the mighty headliners with their personal lyrics and profound sense of sound.
Sharing songs from the band’s most recent release, 2023’s The Window, as well as older material, Steiner offered some background to their origins and, of course, mentioned everyone’s favorite part of the city.
“We love it here in New Haven,” she said. “You guys got it all figured out. You put clams on your pizza.”
A song like “Elvis Is in the Freezer” — a true story “about how hard it is to say goodbye,” featuring Steiner’s cat named Elvis, which passed while she was away at college — was offered back-to-back with a new song also about saying goodbye, “The Window,” which began with Steiner alone on vocals and guitar and swelled to a full band symphony.
“But I need to tell you everything, before it’s too late, that I don’t regret a single day, and you’re so beautiful,” Steiner sang as audience members swayed along and smiled.
“Let’s shake our butts,” she added after introducing the song “Go Outside,” which had a fun and tasty twang to it as Steiner expressed how she wanted to “lay down in the sand’ and “walk down my street,” a fine anthem for those of us who have been yearning for spring and summer to offer us a chance to do just that.
Before the final song, she invited everyone to come by the merch table and say hi after the show was over.
“We want to make new friends,” she added. By the response of the crowd, it was evident they had most likely made new fans as well.
The Decemberists began their set in acoustic mode, opening with “All I Want is You,” one of the three new songs released in advance of their next full album. Colin Maloy on vocals and guitar, Lizzy Ellison on vocals, and Victor Nash on trumpet stood close together in near total darkness to deliver the immediately endearing love song that many in the crowd already knew well enough to sing along to.
“Welcome to the gazebo,” said Maloy as the rest of the band members — Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query, and John Moen — joined the three at the front of the stage framed by large light bulbs on sconces for another acoustic song, the fan favorite “Shankill Butchers” from the 2006 album The Crane Wife, which famously takes a true story of Ulster Volunteer Force members involved in some pretty heinous activity in 1970s Northern Ireland and creates a Grimm-type fairy tale bedtime song. Did we all sing along? Yes, we sure did.
When the band plugged in, the electricity pulsed through the venue with the old and new, including “Burial Ground,” another new song that had Maloy asking the crowd to sing along with the chorus and posing for a few photos.
“Those are gonna sell,” he said with a smile.
Ellison came to the front of the stage again, this time to take lead vocals, for “The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid” as the stage was bathed in red light. The performance was fiery and freeing, with audience members singing and dancing along as if awakened from wintery slumber.
Two more songs that have not been released yet, but will be on the new record, were performed and received a rousing response, cementing their place in the band’s discography. “Oh No” had a more Latin rhythm-based, danceable feel to it, while “Long White Veil” offered a “ghost story set in Astoria, Oregon.”
Throughout the night Maloy conversed with the band and the crowd, even joking about Ratboys and other band members being from New Haven (even thought they weren’t) and yes, there was mention of pizza.
The next three songs of the set — “Make You Better,” “Severed,” and “16 Military Wives” — really saw the crowd partake in the festivities, singing along with smiles a mile wide. Before “16 Military Wives,” Maloy said it was “as true today as it was 20 years ago.” He then ruminated on being 20 years older and eventually being 20 years older than he is now, adding that he was raising “public awareness that death is coming for all of us.”
“Let’s sing the death away,” he yelled as they launched into the song.
The set ended with “I Was Meant for the Stage,” which had Maloy singing “I was meant for the crowd, I was meant for the shouting,” as the crowd indeed shouted, sang along, and even got teary eyed.
“And from the floor boards to the flies, here I was fated to reside, and as I take my final bow, was there ever any doubt?”
Was there ever a better way to end a set? Actually, there was, because the band came back for an encore: the 19-minute opus “Joan in the Garden,” another recent release from the new album. Many a band would rest on their laurels and play a couple of their biggest hits, but not The Decemberists. They were going to leave their fans reinvigorated and ready for more. By the time it was all over, summer felt that much closer.
Karen Ponzio Photos
