The Decemberists Fall 2009 tour dates; festivals

The Decemberists announce Fall tour dates; Band continues to earn rave reviews for live performance of The Hazards Of Love

NPR Music to live webcast & broadcast Newport Folk Festival performance;

World Cafe performance airs

The Decemberists have announced Fall dates for their "A Short Fazed Hovel" 2009 tour.

The tour, which features a full performance of their acclaimed new album 'The Hazards of Love', has been earning rave reviews as it crosses the United States from coast to coast, including sold-out performances at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, the Edgefield Winery in their hometown of Portland, Oregon, and stand-out performances at major summer festivals including Sasquatch and Bonnaroo.

The band will also be performing this year at the Newport Folk Festival, Lollapalooza, Austin City Limits Music Festival and Treasure Island Music Festival.

A limited number of pre-sale tickets for the Fall tour, which launches September 20, 2009 in Burlington, Vermont, went on sale July 27th to the public on a first-come, first-served basis at Decemberists on Music Today website. Full venue and ticketing information is available at The Decemberists’ newly redesigned website. See full list of upcoming tour dates below.

NPR Music will be live webcasting and broadcasting The Decemberists’ performance at the Newport Folk Festival on August 1, 2009, which will not be The Hazards of Love, but instead a special set for the festival.

The band’s performance and interview on World Cafe aired on July 24th, and is now featured on the NPR Music website.

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Check out what the critics have been saying about The Decemberists' live performance of The Hazards of Love featuring special guests Becky Stark (Lavender Diamond) and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond):

"Indie Rock Show of the Year? Last night’s riveting, and indeed, bombastic re-creation of the disc at Radio City Music Hall proved Meloy inflates his music, and not himself. He affably ceded the best songs to the guest singers, who made them so: Lavender Diamond’s Becky Stark and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Worden. The diamond twins, they dazzled." - New York Magazine

"In a short-attention-span world, the Decemberists dared to release a complicated, dark concept album, The Hazards of Love. Using a prog-rock template, singer/songwriter/guitarist Colin Meloy and his four mates channeled their inner Pink Floyd while spinning fatalistic strong-songs in the Fairport Convention tradition. During a two-hour show Tuesday, the Decemberists made Hazards their entire first set. And they pulled it off with panache." - Boston Herald

"Colin Meloy of the Decemberists understands that when you make a concept album, you go big or go home. With the release of the ambitious story-cycle The Hazards of Love, Meloy and his cohorts in the literate indie-rock quintet are clearly all in. That conviction was evident as the band and a few special guests flooded the Bank of America Pavilion Tuesday night with images of a fair maiden, her rakish beau, shape-shifting woodland creatures, and an evil forest queen." - Boston Globe

“At Merriweather last night, Decemberist-in-Chief Colin Meloy led his Beowulf-pack through The Hazards of Love in its sequential entirety, an unbroken hour-long narrative suite. Gutsy, that, but the crowd was with him. As in all rock operas, the dynamic shifts and crunchy power chords count for more than the Tolkeinesque storyline here, and those big, bombastic changes kept the show accessible. After all, Meloy designed these pieces to lodge in your mind after a single exposure, like the songs for a stage musical. And key motifs recur several times.” - Washington Post

“The Hazards of Love is more rock opera than folk record, complete with linear storyline and tooth-rattling guitar riffs. Performing the thing in its entirety seemed not only natural, then, but essential to the piece's integrity. If I liked The Hazards of Love before, experiencing those big, bombastic metal moments live was a revelation.” - Seattle Weekly

“From the moment Jenny Conlee stepped on stage and took her seat at the organ until the final, ringing note of Colin Meloy's acoustic guitar, to every Chris Funk instrument change in between (a rough count has him playing acoustic guitar, electric guitar, pedal steel, mandolin, a few other odd-shaped string instruments and drums), Hazards is ... astounding.” - The Oregonian

“The Hazards of Love is an all-or-nothing proposition… Yet the large form found coherence; melodies gained strength and resonance each time they returned to underline a plot parallel, as Mr. Meloy’s libretto traced arcs from desire and love to destruction and oblivion.” - The New York Times

“The Decemberists played from start to end their album The Hazards of Love. It’s quite an impressive work—a big rock opera/musical with a weaving fantasy storyline and a sound that incorporates heavy metal and gentle, intricate '60s British folk. The band was in absolute control of the new material and with a powerful presence, singer-composer Colin Meloy spun the tale... a remarkable experience.” - The Wall Street Journal

"The Decemberists came armed to the teeth for their album’s live premiere... The Hazards of Love is unashamedly over the top in its dreams and execution. And at the Decemberists nailed it that way. Their opera is ready for the road." - Rolling Stone

“Last night, the Decemberists played The Hazards of Love in its entirety, for the first time ever... it was a triumph…Colin Meloy's latest sprawling rock opera grew on me, the raw emotion cutting through the frilly window-dressing and the metal (yes, metal) parts feeling more and more assured. The album's few repeating musical themes lodged in my brainstem and refused to leave, and I realized: this band has pulled it off yet again.” - Pitchfork

“Meloy's prog-folk hard rock opera translates to the stage in furious, high-volume fashion, with the sashaying, white-clad, sweet-voiced Stark as the romantic heroine Margaret, and the sinister and slinky, black-clad Worden as the Forest Queen.” - AOL Spinner

The Decemberists confirmed 2009 tour dates are as follows:

(Dates and information subject to change.)

Aug. 1 Newport, RI Newport Folk Festival
Aug. 2 Montreal, QUE Osheaga Music & Arts Festival
Aug. 3 Toronto, ONT Kool Haus (w/ Heartless Bastards)
Aug. 5 Madison, WI Orpheum Theater (w/ Heartless Bastards)
Aug. 6 Chicago, IL Metro (w/ Heartless Bastards)
Aug. 7 Chicago, IL Lollapalooza
Aug. 8 Indianapolis, IN Murat Egyptian Room (w/ Heartless Bastards)
Aug. 10 Louisville, KY W.L. Lyons Brown Theater (w/ Blind Pilot)
Aug. 11 Detroit, MI Royal Oak Theater (w/ Heartless Bastards)
Aug. 13 Buffalo, NY UB Center for the Arts (w/ Heartless Bastards)
Aug. 14 Pittsburgh, PA Byham Theater (w/ Heartless Bastards)
Aug. 15 Schwenksville, PA Philadelphia Folk Festival
Aug. 16 Holyoke, MA Mountain Park (w/ Heartless Bastards)
Sept. 20 Burlington, VT Flynn Theater (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Sept. 21 Montclair, NJ Wellmont Theater (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Sept. 23 Norfolk, VA The Norva (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Sept. 24 Charlottesville, VA Charlottesville Pavilion (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Sept. 25 Asheville, NC Thomas Wolfe Auditorium (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Sept. 27 Nashville, TN Ryman Auditorium (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Sept. 29 St. Augustine,FL St. Augustine Amphitheater (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Sept. 30 Orlando, FL Hard Rock Live (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Oct. 2 Houston, TX House of Blues (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Oct. 3 Austin, TX Austin City Limits Music Festival
Oct. 4 Tulsa, OK Cain's Ballroom (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Oct. 6 Lexington, KY University of Kentucky, Lexington (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Oct. 7 Columbia, MO Ninth St. Fall Fest (w/ Laura Veirs & the Hall of Flames)
Oct. 18 San Francisco, CA Treasure Island Music Festival
Nov. 18 London, UK Forum
Nov. 19 London, UK Coronet

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