Since my divorce, my social life has opened up again (they don’t call them a ball-and-chain for nothing…). Actually, it has really ‘had the ability’ to open up, because I haven’t actually done anything. The point is that I could have. If I’d wanted to. This week I finally decided that it was time to integrate myself back into indie society by getting out to a gig (and not before time – this blog tells me that my last gig was back in March – of last year!). It took me a while to find something that I wanted to see, but eventually I discovered that Death Cab For Cutie were coming to town. They’re not my favorite band, but I do have a couple of albums (OK, 10 including 2 EPs…), and although they do tend to veer to the mellow side of my listening spectrum, I saw a concert/documentary of theirs (Drive Well, Sleep Carefully) on TV once and they can certainly rock out, live, so I thought I’d give it a go.
The support band was Telekinesis, who I’d never heard of (probably because the tickets and online listings didn’t mention them, which always seems a bit mean-spirited – surely they could do with the publicity?), but that’s more of a selling point than a downside. I always like to catch the support band – sometimes you find some real gems. I don’t know that I’d call Telekinesis a gem, but they are definitely worth a look. Anchored by the drummer/singer (no small feat), they delivered a great line in catchy indie-pop songs. Rolling Stone and Stereogum have both touted them as a “Band to Watch”. The Stereogum article (actually penned by Chris Walla of DCFC) has a couple of songs to play/download, including the pretty Coast of Carolina. So check it/them out, and before you know it you’ll be singing along.
Lights up at the brief intermission at least gave me the opportunity to cast a withering glare at the woman next to me who spent just about all of Telekinesis’ set checking her Facebook page on her phone. Unperturbed by my disdain, she also spent just about all of DCFC’s set on her phone as well. Why? Why go see a band and then not pay attention? Why not stay at home and let me have me my armrest back? (Yes, I was in seats. Every time I get a seated ticket I wish I was down on the floor with the great unwashed, instead of being up with the rest of the old-asses. But then when I do get a standing ticket I get backache and wish I’d got a seat, back with Waldorf and Statler, where I obviously belong.)
Death Cab For Cutie kicked their set off with (as I predicted – at least to myself) I Will Possess Your Heart. This is a great opener, although you had to feel for the rest of the band: the first 2 or 3 minutes are all instrumental, with Ben Gibbard strolling on just in time for the vocals to kick in, to a rapturous applause saved just for him. It was a bit undeserved, as the rest of the band are no slouches, especially the multi-talented Chris Walla, who split his time between guitar and keyboards (with some knob-twiddling effects thrown in for good measure). That said, this was clearly the Ben Gibbard Show, which was made painfully obvious at one point by the way he got an orangey spotlight to the other three’s white – which made it look as though he was in color and the others in shades of gray, like some selective colorization of an old black-and-white movie. Though he is enormously talented… In addition to writing all of the words and much of the music, he plays a mean guitar and some impressive keyboards. And he also plays drums, as evidenced by a rocked-out We Looked Like Giants, which seems to be a live staple of thieirs – and rightly so. For a song about fumbling around in the back seat of a car “learning how our bodies worked” it’s certainly got balls. During the start of the song, the crew assembled a mini drum kit (a pared down one, not a drum kit for ‘little people’), at which Mr. Gibbard sat as he and the regular drummer guy pounded away, face to face, for the middle portion, before switching back to guitar for the ending. Pretty cool, although it was probably only me who saw the irony of needing two drummers in a song that name-checks the Jesus And Mary Chain, a band who didn’t even have one – relying only on a pedal-operated drum machine (at least when I saw them – the less-than-stellar Bobby Gilespie having by that stage vacated the drum-stool for Primal Scream [whom I also saw back in the day]), but irony aside, it was undoubtedly the highlight of the gig.
Here’s a version of We Looked Like Giants from the same tour, a couple of months ago. The quality is pretty good, and it’s well worth taking 10 minutes out of your schedule to check it out, even if this version doesn’t have the extended feedback at the end of the song that we were treated to in Houston.
Maybe the feedback is a further nod to the JAMC, although with DCFC the feedback is very controlled, and not the ‘it could all explode/implode at any second’ vibe you got with the JAMC. But I guess that’s just the Death Cab way – controlled. Which is probably a good thing. I don’t know if a band could deliver something as gentle and gorgeous as I Will Follow You Into The Dark (delivered by Mr. G as a brief solo acoustic interlude) and then deliver an all-out sonic freak-out two songs later, without appearing contrived. Anyway, noisenik moment over, the band switched back to their more accessible, ‘sensitive’ side for much of the rest of the set.
No sooner had the band exited the stage at the end of their set, than about a third of the audience left. I’ve never understood that – encores are pretty much a given with all but the surliest/contemptuous of bands, so why pay ($39.50) to see a band and then not see all of the show? Maybe they felt like they’d already seen enough of DCFC to justify adding them to their list of ‘bands I’ve seen’, and had better things to do. Whatever. They all missed a nice four-song encore that started with The New Year, and ended in a rousing Transatlanticism, which proved to be the perfect closer, with Gibbard crooning “I need you so much closer” softer and softer, into silence. Or as much silence as you can get with 2,500 fans cheering away, anyway.
Overall, it was a damn fine gig. They played all but one of my favorites – I guess it was too much to expect them to play Stability in all its 12’22” glory, but to be fair it isn’t exactly a toe-tapper, and what with the last 8 minutes being instrumental, it’s probably only me who sees it as the pinnacle of their canon. I’d go and see Death Cab For Cutie again (but maybe next time I’ll get floor tickets…), and I now consider myself to be back in the game. Or one game, anyway…
Leave a Reply