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Sam and I returned to Climate Pledge Arena on Oct 6th for Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service.
This was a unique concert in that we knew exactly what songs would be played and in what order they would be played in prior to the show. I’ll explain.
Ben Gibbard formed Death Cab in Bremerton back in 1997. Since then the band has released ten studio albums. They released their first album in 1998 but it was their fourth album, Transatlanticism, released in 2003 that really put them in the spotlight, both critically and commercially.
At the same time Ben had a little side project where he worked with Jenny Lewis (from the band Rilo Kiley) and producer Jimmy Tamborello. They chose the band name The Postal Service due to the fact that, because of scheduling conflicts, Ben and Jimmy had to work on the songs separately and mail versions of the songs back and forth. The Postal Service also released their album in 2003 and it unexpectedly was a huge hit, eventually going platinum. The Postal Service was a one-off project and although they toured for the album and have since done some live performances here and there they really never had any intention to continue as a band.
Forward 20 years and the bands decided to do a twentieth anniversary tour, playing both albums from 2003 track by track in their entirety. Death Cab opened the show which makes sense. Death Cab tours often and is much more accessible than The Postal Service so even though Transatlanticism was a huge hit everyone was really there to see The Postal Service. Ben obviously fronts both bands and so was on stage the whole night.
To me it’s pretty amazing that you can have two albums without a bad song on them. Obviously some songs were radio hits and others weren’t but every song on both albums is good regardless whether it was a hit single or not. Ben wrote most of the lyrics and I’ve always really enjoyed his song writing style. Ben uses a lot of imagery that expands the song’s universe.
An example would be the song “Title and Registration” from Transatlanticism. It starts out with “The glove compartment isn’t accurately named, and everybody knows it. So I’m proposing a swift, orderly change, because behind its door there’s nothing to keep my fingers warm and all I find are souvenirs from better times…”.
Now, the song obviously isn’t about the glove compartment or trying to change its name but the imagery gets you to think. I know my glove box is basically a junk drawer in the car and the only time it ever gets cleaned out is when I sell the vehicle. I’ve found pictures and whatnot from years ago sitting there and that’s Ben’s point. As the song goes on you find that he’s “looking for some legal documents” (hence the title of the song) and instead finds all of these items that bring back memories of past relationships and that’s what the song is really about. The opening line of the song immediately gets you thinking though and makes you curious about where he’s going with the song and this is the case with much of the music Ben writes.
Opening the night was a band called “The Beths” from New Zealand. I’d never heard of them but they were quite good so there’s some new music to listen too.
