By K.D. Norris
The first of the 31 planned concerts of the 2018 Fifth Third Bank Summer Concerts at Meijer Gardens begins this week with a sold-out show by the Tedeschi Trucks Band on Tuesday, May 30, with pushing 20 of the remaining 30 shows also sold out and many of the rest with very few tickets available from the original source.
While many of the “tickets available” shows are down to under 100 of the 1,900 general admission seats of the grass, the logic of which concerts are sold out and which are still up for grabs is a little bit of a puzzler, as several of the season’s best offerings still had tickets available as of the Memorial Day weekend.
One such “How can that not be sold out?” show is the Monday, June 4, visit of The Decemberists — a concert by a band clearly on the alt-rock “hot in 2018” list. (If there are any original source tickets — not from the secondary market, at increased prices — available from Meijer Gardens (at original price), check here.)
The Portland, Oregon based band — on their just released “I’ll Be Your Girl” album/CD/download, and their just begun “Your Girl/Your Ghost” world tour — are a well-established alternative rock band exploring a new sound, as evidenced by the first single off their new release, the synthesizer driven “Severed”.
“When you’ve been a band for 17 years, inevitably there are habits you fall into,” The Decemberists front man Colin Meloy said in supplied material. “So our ambition this time was really just to get out of our comfort zone. That’s what prompted working with a different producer and using a different studio. We wanted to free ourselves from old patterns and give ourselves permission to try something different.”
And when he says a “different producer,” he is referring to John Congleton, who has produced “different” musicians such as St. Vincent and Lana del Rey, and helps the band embrace “different” influences such as Roxy Music and New Order, according to the band.
The Decemberists — songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist Meloy, guitarist Chris Funk, keyboardist Jenny Conlee, bassist Nate Query, and drummer John Moen — made a conscious effort to “broaden their sonic range” as a follow-up to 2015’s “What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World”, which included the hit single “Make You Better”, and a history highlighted by almost folk-pop songs such as “Down By the Water” and “The Calamity Song”, both from 2011.
“On the last record,” Meloy said, “there were moments when I thought I was making familiar choices. I tried to be mindful in the songwriting process of challenging myself and being a little more critical. The idea was, how can we make unfamiliar choices, turn off the light a little and grope around in the dark a bit?
“We were talking about music and our references (and) … it kept coming back to Roxy Music and early glam, and we dove in with that in mind … we were trying to embrace that Bryan Ferry aspect, that kind of set the tone.”
Continuing on the new direction of “I’ll Be Your Girl”, and praising the input of fellow band members Funk and Conlee, Meloy said the single “Severed” was an example of a significant team effort.
“That was written as a punk song, but wasn’t really working,” he said. “Jenny set this arpeggio throughout it, and it became like an early New Order song. And I had forgotten that when we made the demo, I also started a file to turn it into more of a Depeche Mode song—I actually wanted it to be a synth song all along.”
Summing up the desire of a veteran band finding new inspiration, challenging itself to re-connect with its creativity, Meloy said: “Making music is an infinite choose-your-own-adventure, and when you go down one path, the other paths get sealed off. So every time we could, we said, ‘If this is what our impulses would tell us to do, let’s try to imagine it in a different way.’”
Can’t wait to hear the Decemberists’ new and different way.
Other concerts (maybe) not yet sold-out
Talking about concerts which may still tickets remaining available, the list includes one this weekend — Gladys Knight on Sunday, June 3 — and later nights with Jackson Browne, Air Supply and Patti LaBelle, as well as Alabama performing for a special fundraising show to benefit the Garden’s “Welcoming the World: Honoring a Legacy of Love” capital campaign.
Most surprising, to me anyway, are that there are still tickets available for several more “hot” shows that I am looking forward to: the modern alt-pop darlings Fitz and the Tantrums, the late 1970s New Wave/early ‘80s Power Pop sounds of Joe Jackson, the reformed classic late ‘90s alt-rock juggernaut +LIVE+, and the always great annual visit of Lyle Lovett (with his Large Band).
For more information on Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park, the concerts and all the details on what to bring and not bring to the outdoor amphitheater, visit meijergardens.org .
