Colin Meloy with Eleanor Friedberger at the Woman’s Club, Minneapolis (11/13/13)
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Colin Meloy Setlist
Tour Dates
01/16/14 Los Angeles, CA Fonda
01/17/14 San Francisco, CA Fillmore 01/21/14 Portland, OR McMenamins 01/22/14 Seattle, WA The Neptune Read More
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ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER
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Eleanor Friedberger, in her artsy video gamey/Egyptian dress, started her set with the rather depressing song, “I’ll Never Be Happy Again”. The song is about meeting someone so perfect that afterward, she’ll never be happy again. That song, as well as the majority on her set, was taken from her latest album Personal Record, out now on Merge Records.
Friedberger is noticeably by herself, the last two times we saw her in Minneapolis, since June, she is usually accompanied by a full backing band. Still, despite the absent of her band, Friedberger seem incredibly comfortably sitting and playing her electric guitar for us.
Highlight from her set was a The Fiery Furnaces song, “Evergreen”, which was unexpected since it’s not from Personal Record. I also thought “Echo or Encore” was also good, although, based on its lyrics, could have been the finale (“I adore you as before, your echo or your encore“). Instead, the last song was “My Mistakes”, which she played over a sax pre-recording.
Colin Meloy described his solo shows as a campfire shows. Eight years ago, he decided he was going to release these themed cover EPs, starting with Morrissey. His latest cover EP is devoted to The Kinks, although, surprisingly only one Kinks cover was done for last night’s show (“Do You Remember Walter?”).
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Photo of Setlist
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As you can see from the setlist, the majority of the songs are the Decemberists songs, which is just perfect for fans in the audience. Meloy knows his audience well, often egging fans to finish singing the songs for him.
A few new songs, possibly for a future Decemberists album, included the intro song, “The Singer Addresses His Audience”, “Philomena” and “Lake Song”.
Meloy must benefit from hearing someone call out “Free Bird” every night, because without a beat, he answered, “Are you trying to troll me, sir?” He then stated that he’s a board member of the MACOF, the Musician Against Calling Out Freebird.
There was a surprising moment when Meloy started playing The Replacements’ “Skyway”. Clearly he wanted to play that song for Minneapolis, but based on the loose play style, he may have not had the time to rehearse. Still, it sounded pretty dang good for an unrehearsed effort.
Also, worth noting for any Morrissey fans, is that the “Apology Song” was not about Morrissey (the line in the song, “I’m really sorry Steven, but your bicycle’s been stolen” was often speculated about Steven Patrick Morrissey and his “punctured bicycle”), but about a stolen red Schwinn bicycle. The song was actually never meant to be recorded, according to Meloy on stage.
Anyway, at the end of the campfire journey, Meloy asked his audience to imagine floating into space and landing in New Mexico and hearing a cow herder singing “Bandit Queen” and doing a terrible whistling effort.
Encore was an epic rendition of all three parts of “The Crane Wife”.
With the final night of the tour, Colin Meloy will be returning home to his “farm”, while Eleanor Friedberger will be playing a number of East Coast shows in December (Great Scott in Massachusetts, Port City Music Hall in Maine, and The Space in Connecticut.)
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Colin Meloy at the Woman’s Club, Minneapolis (11/13/13) |
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