Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie performs at the Cross Insurance Arena in Portland on Friday. Photo by Shawn Robbins
Songwriter Ben Gibbard had a good year in 2003. His rock band Death Cab for Cutie, which had been growing in popularity since the late 1990s, experienced a commercial breakthrough with the album “Transatlanticism.” He also created an electronic-pop album with producer Jimmy Tamborello under the name The Postal Service – and that album, “Give Up,” became a surprise hit. On the 20th anniversary of that milestone year, he took both acts on the road to play each album in full, stopping in Portland for a sold-out performance at the Cross Insurance Arena on Friday.
On some level, it’s a bit surreal to witness these songs in an arena. Gibbard benefited greatly from the file-sharing boom of the early 2000s, as young people everywhere found his work on Napster or Limewire and found it ideal for bedroom or dorm-room listening. There is an intimacy to his singing, making it sound like he’s quietly confessing secrets even when he is screaming. The Postal Service was even created through such intimacy, with Gibbard and Tamborello mailing the tracks back and forth and adding components with each send-off. For millennials of a certain age, the anniversary concert may have felt both nostalgic and like a reunion with the music, now grown up and on a bigger stage.
Both bands leaned into the environment. Death Cab for Cutie turned up the explosive riffs on songs like the opener “The New Year” and pummelled the climax of the album’s penultimate track, “We Looked Like Giants.” The Postal Service ramped up the rhythm section, transforming what on the album are intricate and low-key beats into grandiose rave-ups, with Gibbard frequently hopping behind a drum kit to pile another rhythm on top of the mix.
While Transatlanticism boasts some of the sharpest writing of Gibbard’s career, even he knew that The Postal Service was the night’s main attraction, due both to the latter’s immense popularity and the rarity of those songs being taken on the road. It’s possible that this tour is the first time that a long-running rock band has ever served as an opening act for its own one-off side project, but after Death Cab for Cutie played their set, adorned in all-black clothing, the Postal Service took the stage dressed all in white.
Due to the full album presentation, the concert occasionally felt at odds with the proper ebbs and flows of setlist construction. For example, “Such Great Heights,” by far the most well-known song of the evening, was slotted second in the Postal Service set, in keeping with the album. (Gibbard did reprise it with an acoustic, country rendition in the encore). Other Postal Service songs, such as “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” and “We Will Become Silhouettes” were sterling; the pairing of introspective emo lyrics with extroverted accompaniment highlighted the group’s charm. Jenny Lewis, a rock star in her own right, provided admirable multi-instrumental and vocal support, coming to center stage for the duet “Nothing Better” to massive applause.
Taking both bands together, the evening was a testament to Gibbard’s solid songwriting, which can fit the contours of many styles of music, from gentle crooning to driving rock to dance pop. The uniform presentation even exposed the folly of such genre constructs in general. As if to prove this point, both bands took the stage together to send the crowd home with a cover of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.” The choice of cover seemed deliberate and pointed – decades ago, Depeche Mode reshaped music by playing rock songs with electronic instruments and adding guitars to synth-pop. On this anniversary of Gibbard’s two career-changing albums, he showed us this map, and where it took him.
Robert Ker is a freelance music writer in Portland.
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