Announcing: Live Home Library Vol 2

Many of you, upon purchasing the Live Home Library Volume 1 back in the halcyon days of 2020, may have wondered when a second volume in this robust series would be released. You might’ve been surprised to learn that it would be six years later. We, dear reader, are as surprised as you. And yet, here it is: Live Home Library Volume 2.

I do hope that the mere existence of this second volume will set a flag in the ground: we Decemberists do hereby pledge to make these things come out on a more diligent and frequent schedule. I have shouted that to the void; perhaps the void will listen.

In any case, here we are. Or, as the case is, there we were. In Brooklyn, New York, in 2017. Here’s a photo of us, lest you doubt:

Our stage design is still wearing the trappings of our most recent conquest, the touring behind 2015’s What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World. We were only starting to play songs that would eventually end up on our 2018 long player I’ll Be Your Girl. Our three nights in Brooklyn capped a two-week run in the spring of 2017. We were already pretty honed from our time touring over the previous couple years; by the time we hit New York we were a well-oiled machine.

And what better place for a well-oiled machine than a former steel plant? Our run of shows would be the venue’s sophomore airing — LCD Soundsystem had opened the place with their own multiple-night-stand only a few days before. There was still drywall in need of mudding in the backstage.

Over the course of those three nights, we played songs from every dusty corner of our catalogue, from the early stuff to the never-been-played-before stuff. One of the nights, we played The Hazards of Love in its entirety. No leaf was left unturned; very few songs showed up concurrently in the three set lists — they were each mostly unique.

We recorded all three of the shows (indeed, we recorded that whole two week run) for posterity; last summer, myself and the band reviewed all of the songs and picked the very best ones. These, we have enshrined on wax for Volume 2 of this archival series; it’ll be available for purchase on September 25th online and at discriminating indie record stores. You can pre-order it now! Here’s the track list:

You can listen to that last track, a rather charmingly shambolic O Valencia!, here:

You can also order this fetching t-shirt, celebrating our time in Brooklyn, along with this fetching 2-LP set pressed in “Shiny Clear” vinyl from our webshop (though you can also just order the LP). Indie record shops will have a “Ruby Red Right Ankle” variant for sale as well.

Here are some more shots from those shows (including a photo of the winner’s circle from the instrument duel in The Chimbley Sweep, a performance that was too long and unlistenable to include on this release — you really had to be there):

And there you have it! Hopefully it won’t be too long before we’ll have another one these ready to go — though beating a 6 year gap should be a relatively low bar to cross. I hate to imagine what the world will be like in 2032; will our ears still be tuned to the frequencies of music? Or will our sensibilities be forever augmented by the tastes of robots? One can only hope we survive, ears intact…