Music for the Vietnamese Soul; or, A Brief Review of the Decemeberists at the Fox Theater

The following is a post by Hai Dao, a new contributing writer for Vietnam Talking Points.  Look forward to more of his posts in the future!

 

 

I grew up on Vietnamese Opera.

Not the dubbed Chinese soap operas or serials most may be familiar with, but true Vietnamese-produced operas, ones that recount the tragic story of magnificent generals and their maidens in haunting Vietnamese cadence.

Some of my first memories of living in the United States involve watching cai luong with my mother during cold Washington nights (her attempt, I speculate, at combating homesickness). The elaborate costumes, the exaggerated gestures, even the grainy VHS quality added to their majesty. I’ve always loved these epics about unwavering devotion and tragic sacrifice. My idea of Vietnamese culture will forever be informed by their grand spectacle.

As strange as it may seem, the Decemberists recaptured some of that majesty for me at the Fox Theater this past Valentine’s Day. With their mix of folksy blue grass, rock, and alternative sounds, they returned a grandeur to modern music lost in the age of Bieber and Gaga.

The haunting wails of both audience and band during an exuberant rendition of “The Mariner’s Revenge Song,” an epic tale of wrongs and, you guessed it, revenge, recalls the tragic drama of the operas.  The narrator recounts to his nemesis how they came to be the sole survivors trapped in the belly of a whale. In mid-song, the entire band drops to the floor, writhing in anguish as the lead singer, Colin Meloy, bawls in slow, elongated syllables:

The ocean shook

The sky went black

And the captain quailed

And before us grew

The angry jaws

Of a giant whale

This is followed by the agonizing screams of the mariner’s dying shipmates (performed  by the audience) and ends on a gruesome and mischievous note:

It gives my heart

Great joy

To see your eyes fill with fear

So lean in close

And I will whisper

The last words you’ll hear.

The nine-minute performance was epic, tragic, and an unabashed spectacle.

In contrast, “Rox in the Box” off their new album, The King is Dead, deals with early 20^th-century mining operations in California (as most pop song’s today do) by juxtaposing the sing-song rhyme of the first two lines, “Get the rocks in the box / Get the water right down to your socks,” with the morbid reality of the third: “This bulkhead’s built of fallen brethren and bones.” Light-hearted and brutal in the same breath, they capture the majesty of “ordinary” sacrifice.

Although less flashy than their better known contemporaries, the Decemeberists nevertheless captured the audience’s imagination with tales of hardships, revenge, and, yes, love (it was Valentine’s Day after all). Even the clichéd Valentine’s Day proposal was transformed into a wonderfully quirky spectacle as drummer John Moen, an ordained minister, spontaneously married the couple on stage, and went into terrible renditions of “You Shook me all Night Long,” “Mustang Sally,” and “The Joker,” among others. The entire show produced that same feeling of awe I remember having as a child. There was plenty of music – epic, tragic, ear-wrenching – for my Vietnamese soul.

A live version of “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”

A studio version of “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”