Colin Meloy and the Decemberists teach one hell of an AP Lit class.

With deeply imaginative lyrics and a myriad of musical styles, the Portland, Oregon-based sextet took a packed house at San Francisco's Warfield on quite a ride last night. The band gave the collective mind's eye a literary workout, rolling through an assortment of densely rich stories about war-torn love, grisly crimes, and bird rescues, among other things.

But it did so to a soundtrack that was so fantastic--a backdrop that included prog-folk and baroque-tinged indie-pop and even a dash of klezmer and Irish jigs--that it was exponentially more fun than an author's reading.

Touring in support of their new album The Crane Wife, which hit stores earlier this month, the band kicked off the show with the first two tracks from the new album. But that's where the similarities to most rock shows began and ended, as those two songs ate up nearly a half-hour with a four-course meal's worth of sonic goodness.

"The Crane Wife 3," the first track and the final third of the multipart title track, is based on a Japanese folk tale and relates the story of a poor man who rescues an injured crane, nurses it back to health, and releases it. With moving melodies and Meloy's knack for writing pop songs that easily engage the listener in the story, it was a near-epic way to open a show.

But with the three-movement "The Island" that followed, things got really epic. Starting with the "Southern Man"-esque first part "Come and See," the song undulated for nearly 15 minutes in a way that both told the richly compelling story and completely held the crowd enraptured. Rarely has a tale of rape and murder sounded so sweet, and keyboardist Jenny Conlee's Yes-like organ splashes added surprising prog-rock color.

Looking every bit the high school literature teacher in retro blazer and corduroys, Meloy continued to flex his lyrical muscle throughout the night, particularly on the smuggler's blues of "The Perfect Crime 2" and the eerily soft "Shankill Butchers." The craft songwriter writes multidimensional narratives that go beyond the dialogue and emotion of a scene and add all of the scenery around it.

He also showed off a bit of stage bravado, knocking his glasses off during one rhythmic jam and giving one lucky fan not in attendance a moment to remember by grabbing a cell phone being held aloft and holding it up to the mic as he sang.

The show sagged slightly in the middle as multiinstrumentalist Lisa Molinaro struggled to match the vocal heft of singer Laura Veirs on the album version of the Civil War ghost story "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)."

But it was nary a blip in an otherwise sparkling set. The Crane Wife is the Decemberists' first album after its move from the indie world to major label Capitol Records. It's a move that has come at the peril for many an indie band before it--pleasing the indie base can often be at odds with the expectations of a major.

But the first product of the move is a terribly compelling album that translates beautifully into the live setting. The Decemberists make music that is both the feature film and its soundtrack.