Ben Gibbard, thank god, is self-aware. “I know for a fact I will never have a year again like 2003,” he said in a press release announcing this fall’s double twentieth anniversary tour celebrating Death Cab for Cutie’s Transatlanticism and the Postal Service’s Give Up. “...These two records will be on my tombstone, and I’m totally fine with that. I’ve never had a more creatively inspired year.”
Few musicians have released two culture-shifting records in the span of a single year, and even less have done it with two different musical outfits. And while it may seem like a gauntlet to play every night, for 30+ shows, Gibbard said in a recent interview that for him, performing two 45-minute albums back to back, with a brief intermission to swap bands and outfits, is roughly the same workload as a typical two-hour Death Cab for Cutie concert. Maybe there’s a touch of pride as well: “I felt [that] because I found myself in this unique position to even attempt this, it would be foolish not to do it.”
Back in 2003, Death Cab for Cutie was Gibbard’s main band and the Postal Service was his side project, the latter coming about through traded tracks with producer Jimmy Tamborello (aka Dntel) sent via snail mail. Eventually Jenny Lewis, then of Rilo Kiley, joined in, providing gorgeous vocal tension for Gibbard on Give Up, the first and only Postal Service LP. They were barely a band in a traditional sense—they played just one tour, in 2003—but it hardly mattered: commercially speaking, the platinum-selling Give Up eclipsed anything Death Cab ever released. Which was impressive in its own right: Transatlanticism went Gold, became Seth Cohen’s entire personality on The O.C., and remains a touchstone for fans of introspective, emo-tinged indie rock. But Give Up was a force of nature among young millennials, with its glowing-orb synths and chintzy-feeling drum machines, its soft-focus masculinity and doomed romance, and its massive hooks that launched a thousand late-2000s/early 2010s vocal-electronic indie acts.
When the Postal Service returned a decade ago, to headline festivals and tour nationally, the nostalgia cycle for the early 2000s hadn’t yet commenced—it was mostly that no one had ever seen the trio live. Death Cab, on the other hand, was and is a touring workhorse; you could catch a song or two off Transatlanticism at any one of their many tours over the last 20 years. Bottling that moment in time now is smart, just as my generation is facing middle age and longing (even more) for the music of their youth.
On Tuesday night, at the first of two tour stops at Madison Square Garden, Transatlanticism opened the show, providing the initial pang of nostalgic catharsis. Death Cab, which has been performing without original guitarist-producer Chris Walla for nearly a decade, sounded heavy in the places needed to deliver that catharsis, like the overpowering crescendo of the title track. (Drummer Jason McGerr brought a brooding power to these songs.) In the few bright spots on a classic record about the bummerdom of long distance relationships, like “The Sound of Settling,” the quartet really kicked up the energy; Gibbard seemed like he might sustain physical damage with how forcefully he was jangling his arm at his guitar.
I saw the Transatlanticism tour as a teenager, dragged my dad to it in fact (he made me leave early), and I don’t remember Gibbard having anywhere near this much goofy charisma. (A coworker who saw both Death Cab and the Postal Service live in 2003 felt the same way.) Gibbard is now an avid runner, and it’s hard to not think of that when he’s so light on his feet onstage, moving spryly along to the moody grooves where he used to spend most of his time on stage flipping his bangs out of his face. When he took the front part of the stage alone to sing Transatlanticism’s saddest ballad, “Passenger Seat,” he came across like a tender-hearted crooner, an indie-rock game Chris Isaak. When he sang lines like, “When you need directions/Then I’ll be the guide/For all time,” fans screamed out their devotion in return. On bended knee, a visibly moved Gibbard blew kisses to the crowd at the end of the song. He seemed at peace with the angsty masterpiece he made as a young man, and the role it’s played in the lives of listeners who are now adults themselves.
Of course, not everyone was singing each over-articulated verse of “Tiny Vessels” quietly to herself. Most people throughout the seated areas of the arena spent the entire Transatlanticism set sitting down. But the floor was packed by the time the Postal Service took the stage around 10 p.m., people in the stands were finally on their feet, and Gibbard had switched out of an all-black outfit into a white one (the red mic cords, a nod to the Transatlanticism album cover, were also swapped), all meaning: It’s time for a little fun.
The Postal Service set had more energy, and it wasn’t just the crowd or the peppier nature of the songs. Gibbard, Lewis, Tamborello, and multi-instrumentalist Dave Depper turned MSG into an in-my-feelings dance party. Every fan I talked to before seeing the tour had commented on what a gift it is to see Jenny Lewis up there, and they weren’t wrong: she appeared to be having the time of her life, twirling around in a chic white dress, banging drums and shredding guitar, dueting adorably with Gibbard on “Nothing Better.” (“It’s kind of a boy-girl thing,” he cheekily commented before that track.) Unsurprisingly, the live versions of “The District Sleeps Alone” and “Such Great Heights” hit the hardest; these homespun little dance tracks felt like they had been written for arenas.
At a show where you know every turn of the setlist, an element of surprise is a gift. The encore consisted of “Such Great Heights” again, performed acoustically by Gibbard and Lewis in the folksy style of Iron & Wine’s cover, and both bands teaming up to go to town on Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence.” The last song’s for “the old heads,” Gibbard said, and the stage lights turned rainbow. It’s nice to dance to songs that made you cry in your youth, like a happy ending to a sad story.
