You cannot fully understand Colin Meloy’s art unless you know that he is white.
Oh, yes: from the Hans Christian Kalevala murder-ballad that falls into the chilliest lullaby I’ve heard in a good long while, to the endless sloppy drunken jam-band encore we finally (cheerfully) walked out on (“Wooden Ships on the Water,” Jenn informs me; my education is lacking in some odd respects)—the piercing cry of “Sing O muse of the passion of the pistol!” over a fleshy Talking Heads vamp—the majesty of the Crane Wife herself, with that syncopated oceanic lurch of the band in the chorus that shakes the foundations out from under your moving feet—oh, yes. It’s going to be a good one.
I’m so glad it was good! And that you won’t have missed out on this album’s tour.
I have tickets for the show at the Warfield!
(You are much too polite, Dylan, given our cruel gloating call from front row.) —So I went and found one of them torrent things.
Long story short (ha!): they’ve sold out, and have gotten better in every imaginable way. I just played it through once, and I’m looking back through the structure of the thing in heartbroken awe. Seek! Find! Listen!