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With only two UK dates this year, The Decemberists were guaranteed to sell out their London shows, where they performed the current album Hazards of Love complete and uninterrupted.

They split the show into two halves, each with a very different vibe. Strangely, despite its excellence and power, they started with Hazards of Love , a tour-de-force that, while giving off a whiff off medievalism, takes folk-prog into the twenty-first century.

The small stage was cramped with seven multi-instrumentalists, most playing three items during the performance. I have genuinely never seen such busy roadies. They were constantly queuing up to change over guitars as if they were waiting for a bus, and at one point Colin Meloy changed from six-string to twelve-string during a chorus. At another, there were five drummers on stage (this seems to be en vogue for live gigs at the moment, but was impressive nonetheless).

At times the show was atmospheric enough to make you want to close your eyes, but you knew that if you did, there was a fair chance of missing something, whether the bass being bowed, Shara Worden stomping with a distinct lack of elegance, or strobes during the riffy bits.

This definitely had the air of a ‘70s epic, with Becky Stark dressed as a white-robed queen, and a sense of story throughout the set. It is now rare to intend a disc to be played from start to finish anywhere, let alone live, but the extra power of atmosphere, volume and performance certainly raised the material above the level of the collective individual tracks. And I say that, noting that The Word magazine rated the disc as one of its best fifteen of the decade.

This set had quality in depth. Meloy must have one of the most distinctive voices in rock, but both girl singers had stunning voices in different ways. On the higher and louder sections, Stark was as powerful as Grace Slick at her most electric, and the crowd ­ who were really loving this gig ­ showed their appreciation. But all the players’ skills and the range of the songs were remarkable: at one minute you were listening to a sea-shanty in 3/4 time with accordion and guitar; the next, Christ Funk was getting Sabbath riff sounds from his SG; a bit later, the pedal steel was playing.

Had the gig ended after Hazards of Love, it would have been short, but memorable as a highlight of the year. When the Decemberists returned for a second hour after a break, the whole mood changed. Gone was the distant goth-folk-epic performance and in came the chatty, we-are-your-mates-onstage side of the band, with Meloy leading the crowd in three-part vocal arrangements, constantly bantering and getting some lengthy “I’m being eaten by a whale” sounds from the partying crowd during the encore, “The Mariner’s Revenge Song”.

After the feast of Hazards of Love , there could not be enough from The Crane Wife for me, but the songs just about came more from that and Picaresque than earlier discs. Having the individual tracks felt a bit like the starter coming after the main course, but with two separate hours of superb music and a band that was happily giving the crowd everything, no one was complaining.

Derek Walker