Colin Meloy Sings Live!

Live! is essential listening for Decemberists obsessives--and an excellent primer for those who aren't fans just yet. [May 2008, p.135]

Albums like this are tailor-made for devoted fans, but in this case, Colin Meloy Sings Live! gives you a glimpse of what makes the Decemberists frontman tick.

Sings Live! is clearly an offering from Colin Meloy to his devoted fans who have either especially enjoyed his shows or have never had the opportunity to attend them. In that respect, this live collection achieves its (hardly lofty) goals, and for that Meloy should be applauded, perhaps not as raucously as at his shows, but, y’know, a golf clap would be appropriate.

The whole collection is bound together with such charming confidence and good humour that you’ll easily forget any of the limitations--real or potential--of the unaccompanied unplugged concept that could have been Colin Meloy’s undoing.

Fans of him and the band will love the intimacy and relish the chance to hear him without all the trimmings, but for everyone else, it would be wise to take him with the excess before going without.

For diehards only.

Now the kid’s a toddler and his pop is widely known as Stephen Colbert’s hyper-literate, prog-rocking green-screen nemesis, but Sings Live! calls to mind a simpler time.

It's as if a bunch of people have gotten together to try and create a communal experience they don't quite believe in. It's a little depressing here, but elsewhere, the sense of irony serves the album well.

Until the follow-up to 2006's excellent "The Crane Wife," this makes for an adequate stopgap. [May 2008, p.136]

A primer on British folk-revival icon Shirley Collins is the disc's most sparkling moment. [May 2008, p.103]

Without a full band around him, Meloy projects his voice and lets his guitar sparkle and chime, doing greater justice to his ear for folk-y essentials.

This album is a must for Decemberists’ fans and even a fairly pleasant diversion for casuals, but Colin Meloy Sings Live! is exactly that and nothing more: a few interesting veers among a bunch of Decemberists songs stripped of their playful pretentiousness.

Fortunately, Colin Meloy Sings Live! proves that The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy's songs are as solidly built as the seagoing vessels he so readily references. [Spring 2008, p.78]