The Decemberists Dazzled With Baroque Folk-Rock at the Majestic Theatre

To take in The Decemberists is to behold one of the more dazzling magic tricks in the music business. Somehow, for nearly a quarter-century, this baroque folk-rock band from Portland has built a career upon overstuffed, esoteric whimsy, which nevertheless feels as light as air and as urgent as lightning as it unfolds in front of you.

You wouldn’t anticipate an acidic, rollicking satire of the military-industrial complex – “16 Military Wives” – to be such boisterous fun and a high point of audience participation, but The Decemberists thrive on confounding expectations. On paper, it screams trainwreck: accordion colliding with saxophone and trumpet, piled atop drums, cowbell, acoustic and electric guitar – oh, and occasionally stand-up bass. To say nothing of the intensely literate, allusive and evocative lyrics: “I fell on the playing field/The work of an errant heel/The din of the crowd and the loud commotion,” goes a line from 2005’s “The Sporting Life.”

Yet, against all odds – and the often dull, timid tastes of the mainstream – what singer-songwriter Colin Meloy and his collaborators have wrought does work, and it delivers the ecstatic thrill of reveling in the unifying sensation of particular peculiarity. We’re all in here, and we’re all just being weird together. Such was the mood Tuesday night as The Decemberists returned to North Texas and the Majestic Theatre, for the band’s first appearance here in nearly six years.

That gap is due to the quintet’s hiatus, which ended with news of a new record (the too perfectly titled As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again), due out in June. (The forthcoming album’s sprawling 20-minute single, “Joan in the Garden,” served as the night’s lone encore.) “The Peaceable Kingdom” tour allowed for a reintroduction and embrace of Meloy, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee, Nate Query and John Moen’s exquisite interplay. The band is further filled out by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Lizzy Ellison and multi-instrumentalist Victor Nash.

The comfortably full room greeted their arrival on stage with a deafening roar. The show began in disarming fashion, as Meloy, joined by Ellison and Nash, stood center stage, ringed only by eight light bulbs affixed to poles wrapped in some sort of fanciful greenery.

Opening with “All I Want Is You,” the decidedly lo-fi, acoustic opening suggested a feint of sorts, paring back the busyness to focus intensely on the melodies and words. The remaining band members filtered out for “Shankill Butchers” and “The Bachelor and the Bride,” but the effect was unchanged – dimly lit haze, and even just a few rows back, squinting to see the musicians, lingering in darkness. 

Then, with the opening notes of “The Infanta,” the full stage burst to life, a backdrop like something from a lost children’s book unfurled across its length, with riotous lights punctuating the 110-minute performance, as it built and built and built.

Meloy held back from engaging the audience until the funereal atmosphere of the opening trio of songs dissipated, but once he did, he proved a quick-witted host, reveling in the grimness of new material such as “Burial Ground” – “You’re here to forget the reality of your mortality,” he intoned, “but I’m here to remind you!” – and inviting audience members farther back to find their way to empty seats down front.

He’s also an endearingly awkward rock star, galumphing around the stage as his bandmates make a glorious racket behind him – “Make You Better” was a dazzling highlight, as was “The Wanting Comes in Waves,” which featured a jaw-slackening vocal turn from Ellison, and “The Sporting Life,” during which Meloy urged the crowd up out of its seats, and dared them to remain so for the duration: “See if you keep standing,” he cracked. “Those seats look awfully comfortable.”

And it was that sense of intimacy between band and performer that gave the entire evening a distinct charge. By drawing everyone close in the beginning and working toward a gleeful, explosive release, The Decemberists deftly engaged the audience, taking them on a ride as precious and faintly pretentious as it was kinetic and bloody – in Meloy’s case, literally. (“I tried to throw a pick and hit it against my acoustic guitar – I drew blood,” Meloy said after the riotous climax of “16 Military Wives.” “Hazards of the trade!”)

Ending the main set, appropriately, with “I Was Meant for the Stage,” Meloy sang, ironically, of a life intended for the glare of the spotlight: “I was meant for the crowd/I was meant for the shouting,” he crooned, his deceptively muscular tenor ringing out into the darkness. Wry, sure, but also anchored by a grain of self-awareness.

That The Decemberists have found a lasting home within the warmth of that light – whether the literal illumination above the stage or the figurative sensation emanating from those gathered within the venue – defies convention but is no less magical for being so.