It was April, 2003, two months after their Sub Pop release, Give Up, when Benjamin Gibbard from Death
Cab for Cutie, electronic music artist, Dntel (Jimmy Tamborello) and keyboardist/vocalist Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kenny last played together in Detroit. It was clear that they were unable to sell
out The Magic Stick.
Ten years later, with just two new tracks, the trio, adding Laura Burhenn from the Mynabirds to provide additional vocals
and instruments, sold out The Fillmore, which holds three times as many
fans.
This makes perfect sense. The Postal Service has since influenced countless artists who combine
electronic with indie-pop, and has since sold over a million copies of its only
full-length recording. (The band’s name also helped popularize a modern method of
making music: by recording separately in different places and exchanging submixes
of the recordings via, for example, the United States Postal Service.)
Opening with “The
District Sleeps Alone Tonight, ” followed by “We Will Become Silhouettes,” and soon a *new* track, “Turn Around,” and then “Recycled Air,” it was clear that this was
no Björk show; the songs were being played true to form, without much discernible
remixing, rearrangement or new instrumentation. For an electronic music, this
is almost unheard of, but in pop music, especially when there is such a huge
gap in time since anybody has seen the act live, this is consummate. Every track from Give Up was played almost exactly as it was recorded.
Always energetic and exciting to watch, Gibbard put the guitar down and
played a drum set during several songs, adding more movement and variety to the song
list to which everyone was all singing, all dancing.
Michael Welchans