All Points East closes out its 2024 instalment with a celebration of two seminal indie rock albums. Elliott Simpson reviews.
Ben Gibbard will never have another year like 2003 – he’s said as much himself. Not only was it the year that his band Death Cab For Cutie released their breakthrough album, Transatlanticism, but it was also the one where he teamed up with producer Dntel (aka, Jimmy Tamborello) to put out Give Up, the sole release from The Postal Service. Both albums went on to be influential in their own ways: with its blend of heavy guitars and tender lyrics, Transatlanticism helped push indie rock into the cultural mainstream in the mid-2000s, while Give Up pushed the genre in a more electronic direction. So when Gibbard announced a twentieth-anniversary tour for the two albums, it almost made too much sense.
Admittedly though, I felt a little cynical ahead of the bands’ performances. Transatlanticism and Give Up were both significant albums to me when I was younger – the soundtrack to my teenage years – and couldn’t imagine the bands’ performances ever living up to that hype. Besides, did they even want to be playing these songs twenty years on? Wasn’t it more likely that they were in it for the money, cashing in on millennial nostalgia?
That cynicism quickly started melting away as soon as I heard the opening riff of The New Year tear through Victoria Park, and by the time Gibbard was pondering the accuracy of the glove compartment’s name, it had vanished completely. Whether Death Cab was tired of playing these songs or not, they sounded better than ever live. It also helped that Transatlanticism is an album with almost no weak spots (Death of An Interior Decorator is maybe the only track I’d call so-so); from the soaring title track to the sex-in-the-back-of-a-car anthem, We Looked Like Giants, everything flowed incredibly well. By the time Death Cab arrived at the album’s closer, A Lack Of Color, it’s hard to imagine there was anyone left in the crowd still unmoved.
After a brief fifteen-minute interlude, Gibbard returned to the stage with the members of The Postal Service, including Jimmy Tamborello and a show-stealing Jenny Lewis. While the members of Death Cab dressed in black for their portion of the show, The Postal Service donned all-white outfits. It seemed to highlight the stark tonal contrast between the two albums: Transatlanticism is dark and confessional, while Give Up is full of joyfully twee bleeps and bloops.
For as great as The Postal Service’s set was – occasionally threatening to devolve into an all-out dance party – it did highlight one of the potential downfalls of playing albums front to back: live performances are usually sequenced differently to albums. It made sense to lead off Give Up with The District Sleeps Alone Tonight and Such Great Heights, as they’re the album’s two best tracks, but live, it felt like we were receiving the encore first. Thankfully, The Postal Service did their best to account for this, concluding the show with a second performance of Such Great Heights – this time paying homage to Iron & Wine’s folky reinterpretation – as well as a cover of Enjoy The Silence alongside members of Death Cab. The latter was goofy fun, but fun nonetheless.
Ben Gibbard will never have a year like 2003 again, but, to be completely honest, very few artists have had a year even half as good as it. Watching Transatlanticism and Give Up live only underlined how incredible they are as albums; millennial nostalgia doesn’t get any better.
