INDIE ROCK Decemberists invite fans on trip

The growing fan base is continually inspired.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
Ahoy, Colin Meloy; your ship is nearing its port. As the leader, singer-songwriter and captain of his vessel, the up-and-coming indie rock act The Decemberists, Meloy has been taking loyal audiences on maritime adventures for years. In fact, you could say his musical vision has been overwhelmingly ocean-centric.
"The sort of adventures that take place on the water, underneath the water, it's really fascinating to me," said Meloy, calling from Cape Cod, Mass. "You're so far away from civilization that these boats tend to be their own little societies. And there are a lot of mythologies, superstition and ghost stories that come out of maritime fiction and maritime folklore. And that's always been fascinating to me."
Inspiration
Having grown up in landlocked Montana, Meloy said a move to Oregon and living an hour away from the mighty Pacific have continuously inspired him, especially on the band's latest album "Picaresque." Songs such as "The Infanta" and "From My Own True Love (Lost as Sea)" are so overtly nautically inspired, you would guess Meloy wore an 18th century captain's hat, replete with feathers, while in the studio creating the band's British folk sound. However, sensing a shift in the trade winds, Meloy said he's currently inspired to write either a metal or folk album, or something in between, for the next Decemberists album, which should be out a year from now.
In Northeast Ohio
In the meantime, the band is currently touring -- returning to Northeast Ohio for a show Saturday at the Odeon in Cleveland -- with a growing fan base that continually gets inspired by the ever-changing set lists and styles performed nightly on stage.
"For our sake, and to keep them fresh and interesting, we like to do different things with songs in concert," Meloy said. "And also, I think a song does exist in two different arenas. It exists in a recorded form and as a live form, and they can be two completely different things, really. As long as the song is still there, people can still sing along to it and recognize it, I think people appreciate just being a little bit more relaxed about it, and allowing whatever certain spontaneous things that happen on stage to happen."
Scream time
One current moment in the set finds Meloy and his band mates instructing the audience when to scream during the track "Mariner's Revenge Song." Specifically, the group participation part comes when in the song people are swallowed up by a whale. As all Discovery Channel watchers would know, there's a big difference between the scream of being eaten by Moby Dick compared to, say, that of becoming dinner for a large great white shark.
"I would think so," Meloy said. "I think it would last a little longer. I imagine the maw of the whale would be a little bit bigger and allow you a little bit more screaming time before you get crunched."
He paused and then added, "The shark songs wouldn't necessarily have a scream -- maybe a kind of a gurgle."