May 5-11, 2005

musicpicks

The Decemberists

Photo By: Alicia J. Rose

Rock/pop

Don't let them lull you off to dreamland with all those string-laden songs about weepy street urchins and grizzled seafaring folk. Every once in a while this Portland band of drama geeks aims for something relevant, a breath of lucidity and currency between Melvillian fantasies and Dickensian soap operas, and when they go there you're not gonna want to miss it. Their finest such foray into the now is "Sixteen Military Wives," on their most recent and mostly remarkable Picaresque. The song reduces modern warfare to a series of small numbers: "Seventeen company men out of which only twelve will make it back again / Sergeant sends a letter to five military wives as tears drip down from ten little eyes." There's also this: "Fifteen celebrity minds, leading their fifteen sordid wretched checkered lives / Will they find the solution in time, using their fifteen pristine moderate liberal minds?" And on to a huge sing-along chorus about America doing whatever it wants. Yeah, they're preaching to the congregation, but isn't that why you go to church? Now we know how chimney sweeps and vengeful mariners feel when they listen to The Decemberists.

Thu., May 5, 9 p.m., $12-$14, sold out, with Willy Mason, Theatre of Living Arts, 334 South St., 215-922-1011, www.thetla.com.

—Patrick Rapa