{"id":20787,"date":"2024-05-06T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-06T06:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/?p=20787"},"modified":"2024-05-05T16:57:42","modified_gmt":"2024-05-05T15:57:42","slug":"death-cab-for-cutie-the-postal-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/2024\/05\/06\/death-cab-for-cutie-the-postal-service\/","title":{"rendered":"DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE & The Postal Service"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE & The Postal Service<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Play the Classics and Sti<\/strong>r the Feels,<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

says<\/strong> <\/strong>Josh Jackson<\/strong><\/a> in Paste on-line, reminding Norman Warwick of some great music<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Fans at a Death Cab for Cutie show don\u2019t always know what to do with their hands. As the band played through their seminal album,\u00a0Transatlanticism<\/em>\u00a0at the Ameris Bank Amphitheater (shown on cover)<\/em><\/strong> just north of Atlanta recently, the audience seemed to be divided into thirds\u2014some holding onto the chair in front of them, some with arms crossed and some with hands in pockets. I belonged to that latter group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Death Cab For Cutie music can be found on Spotify and still in all good music stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

That doesn\u2019t mean we weren\u2019t having a great time. Fortunately, almost no one was using their hands to hold phones in the air. And I was thrilled by the chance to get to hear the band\u2014missing founding guitarist Chris Walla, but not missing a single faithful note\u2014play an album I listened to more than any other during the latter half of 2003. I\u2019m certain I wasn\u2019t the only one transported to a very specific time and place in my life, and the venue actually got louder whenever a song ended and the audience roared their approval. It\u2019s just that indie rock in those first years of the new millennium was very un-danceable.\u00a0Ben Gibbard<\/a>\u00a0(right)<\/em><\/strong> and company hardly moved on stage, and the crowd followed suit, even during the relative bop of \u201cSound of Settling.\u201d At indie rock shows in 2003, we didn\u2019t sit and we didn\u2019t dance. We stood nearly motionless and cheered politely between songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if my body was still, my mind was racing during songs like \u201cThe New Year,\u201d \u201cTitle and Registration\u201d and \u201cPassenger Seat.\u201d This was the music of every late-night drive at a time when we were just getting\u00a0Paste<\/em>\u00a0off the ground. I was older than the typical Death Cab for Cutie fan at 31, a father of young kids and husband to a wife who was getting tired of my absence. I\u2019d poured so much of my energy\u2014and increasingly my identity\u2014into this new venture, and as much as I was basking in the response it had gotten, I was starting to sense that more important things were slipping away. When the band played the title track, and Gibbard began pleading, over and over, \u201cI need you so much closer,\u201d I was reminded again, by one of rock\u2019s truest romantics, just who in my life has brought me the most joy, and felt immense gratitude. Music doesn\u2019t have to make you dance to make you feel, and Death Cab had us all on our feet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the state of indie rock in 2003 also explains the unexpected success of The Postal Service\u2019s\u00a0Give Up<\/em><\/a>\u00a0when it came out seven months before\u00a0Transatlanticism<\/em>. While the alternative music of my childhood was laden with synths and beats, \u201990s alt-rock ran the other way. Millennial indie kids needed the chocolate of dance music in their rock \u2018n\u2019 roll peanut butter, and that\u2019s what Ben Gibbard, Jimmy Tamborello and\u00a0Jenny Lewis<\/a>\u00a0so gloriously provided. And it\u2019s exactly what my fellow attendees and I needed after the quiet beauty of\u00a0Transatlanticism<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

As The Postal Service (left)<\/em><\/strong> took the stage, hands that had been holding onto chairs suddenly were tapping along with Tamborello\u2019s beats. Crossed arms unfolded into swaying ones. And if hands remained in pockets, the legs attached to those pockets were moving. To call it dancing might be a stretch, but in 2003, these were important baby steps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gibbard hardly spoke a dozen sentences from the stage, to give us the basic facts of his bands\u2019 names and the albums they were playing. To talk about the four subjects of the songs he writes\u2014love, death, Catholicism and movies. To share his appreciation that people still care about this music. Neither Lewis nor Tamborello nor any other Death Cab for Cutie member spoke a single word. But we were there to hear Gibbard and Lewis sing and to sing right along with them to albums that we still love, that still take us back to younger days. To cheer Gibbard on when he sat behind the drum kit or laugh at his single joke, when he introduced the first encore as an Iron & Wine song and proceeded to play a second, acoustic version of \u201cSuch Great Heights.\u201d All the musicians came out for a final song, a cover that they\u2019ve been ending with all tour\u2014Depeche Mode\u2019s \u201cEnjoy the Silence,\u201d a perfect marriage of Death Cab\u2019s earnest emotion with danceable synths, the kind of thing that made Give Up<\/em> such a phenomenon 20 years ago<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Josh Jackson is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Paste Magazine. You can find him among the smoldering ruins of of Twitter at <\/em>@joshjackson<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

talk about the four subjects of the songs Gibbard writes\u2014love, death, Catholicism and movies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20791,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,78,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture-and-tradition","category-entertainment","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20787"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20908,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787\/revisions\/20908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}