The Decemberists - Phoenix, Toronto, May 21, 2005

photo by Frank on Chromewaves

Chromewaves Blog covers the The Decemberists and Rebecca Gates at the Phoenix, Toronto on May 21, 2005. Frank has some photos and a review and blogs:

"The Decemberists were once again splendid. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a band that's as much fun to see perform. Sporting temporary Canadian flag tattoos (they do love Canada), all six of them played with such joyous abandon, you couldn't help but be caught up in it. Of course, when you're performing songs with as unusual lyrical content as they do, irony really isn't an option.

It's hard to pick highlights but besides the set and encore closers (more on those in a bit), "July! July!", "The Bagman's Gambit" and "Sixteen Military Wives" were real standouts for me. Meloy opened the encore in solo acoustic mode and actually acquiesed to an audience request for Morrissey's "Every Day Is Like Sunday". I'm a little curious about what he'd originally intended to play, but I can't imagine it'd have gotten a better response than the Moz cover."

More of review and photos on Chromewaves.

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