Don’t worry if you ever find yourself running for a dictionary while trying to decipher the lyrics to a song by The Decemberists.
You’re not alone.
“I do have to sometimes ask what certain words mean, or what his intention is in a certain phrase,” the band’s keyboardist, Jenny Conlee, said in a recent phone interview. She’s talking about the colorful language employed by singer and songwriter Colin Meloy, who almost single-handedly coined the phrase “literate rock” behind passages such as “medicating in the sun/pinched doses of laudanum/longing for the old fecundity of my homeland.”
Don’t be intimidated, though. The songs aren’t all like that. But in addition to helping build fans’ collective vocabulary, The Decemberists offers a unique blend of catchy tunes full of little yarns about various characters from Meloy’s mind.
“Colin’s background, the way he writes, is more of a short story point of view, more so than as a lyricist,” Conlee said from a stop in Knoxville, Tenn., earlier on the band’s tour, which nears its end tonight at the Paramount Theatre. “He uses a lot of descriptive words that aren’t really used by rock musicians.”
But if The Decemberists is “literate rock,” then what is the rest of rock music?
“I don’t think of it as a diss to the rest of rock music,” Conlee said with a bit of a laugh. “It’s just a totally different point of view and a way to write stories as opposed to just expressions of your heartbreak.”
Speaking of a different point of view, Conlee and the band have seen the country from a new perspective over the past several months, while touring in support of their first major label release, “The Crane Wife,” which came out in October.
“On this tour, there have been a lot of theaters, so people are just kind of staring at us, not dancing or talking to their friends. They’re just watching you,” said Conlee, who’d grown accustomed to playing smaller venues for five years, while rising to the top of indie rock popularity. “It’s kind of weird. We’re doing well enough” that sometimes the clubs are too small and the theaters are kind of big and too formal, she said.
But joining a major label, Capitol Records, and the relatively wide radio airplay brought other perks for the band that hadn’t released a true radio single before.
“When the song ‘Valencia’ comes on, the crowd really reacts,” Conlee said, recalling audiences finally jumping out of their cushy theater seats to groove a little. “That’s kind of a funny thing.”
Conlee said the transition to a big label wasn’t as overwhelming as she expected, but the marketing and promotion engine was massive, including a week in Los Angeles recording live studio shows for Yahoo and AOL, and an in-store performance at The Apple Store in New York for an iTunes exclusive.
“It seems a little mainstreamy to have our albums sold at Starbucks,” Conlee said. “But it’s also a great way to sell your records. They’re trying to take us and put us in front of the rest of America.”
Reporter Victor Balta: victor.a.balta@gmail.com.
Autumn de Wilde photo
The Decemberists – guitarist Chris Funk, drummer John Moen, keyboardist and accordionist Jenny Conlee, singer Colin Meloy and bassist Nate Query – perform tonight in Seattle.
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