{"id":877,"date":"2017-10-27T02:39:00","date_gmt":"2017-10-27T02:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=877"},"modified":"2026-06-27T02:41:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T02:41:17","slug":"death-cab-for-cutie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/?p=877","title":{"rendered":"Death Cab for Cutie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

October 2004, Revolution, For Lauderdale, Fla.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There was, for a brief period of time in the mid-aughts, a Sub-Pop musical uprising, where it seemed like every band worth listening to came from a certain grouping. Paced by the popularity of The Postal Service, bands such as The Elected, Rilo Kiley, The Helio Sequence and The Album Leaf came on the radar. The leader of this movement was Death Cab For Cutie, a band from Washington state whose singer, Ben Gibbard, was achieving a certain cult status.<\/p>\n

It was a good time for Gibbard, who was riding the wave of two excellent albums with different bands. Transatlanticism<\/em> was Death Cab\u2019s breakthrough, while Postal Service\u2019s Give Up<\/em> continued to find converts. Gibbard\u2019s work on Give Up<\/em> (which came out in early 2003) no doubt brought people to Transatlanticism<\/em>, which came out several months later. I, like many at the show, wondered if he would merge the two for the live show (same singer, right?) which gave the prelude to the show an added sparkle.<\/p>\n

That would be a good month of music for me, as several days later I saw Pixies on their reunion tour and later that month went to Iceland for the Airwaves festival. Death Cab proved a good start for the month of music.<\/p>\n

I think many see Death Cab as a band that plays mopey, sad music at a whisper, and to some extent that\u2019s true. Death Cab was more of Gibbard\u2019s solo project at the start, but once a full band was incorporated, the music \u2014 and the band\u2019s popularity \u2014 would pick up. Transatlanticism<\/em> was the band\u2019s last album before moving to a major label, and in that album you hear a group gathering all it learned to create a unified message.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know much about the band\u2019s albums prior to Transatlanticism<\/em>, though I heard \u201cI Was a Kaleidoscope\u201d and \u201cA Movie Script Ending\u201d from The Photo Album<\/em>, which the band played on this night. But the room was there to hear the new stuff \u2014 which wasn\u2019t all that new since it had been out for a year \u2014 as it responded happily to \u201cTitle and Registration\u201d and \u201cThe New Year,\u201d the former seeing the band switch up instruments midway through because of its constant layering. It\u2019s good to see a band try and replicate on stage what can sometime only be done in the studio.<\/p>\n

The band got to plenty of Transatlanticism<\/em> this night, including \u201cExpo \u201986,\u201d \u201cWe Looked Like Giants\u201d and \u201cTiny Vessels\u201d. But it was the title track \u2014 which I think is the band\u2019s best song (though some might argue \u201cI Will Follow You into the Dark\u201d is) \u2014 which took the show to a higher level. In the live setting \u201cTransatlanticism\u201d builds and builds, rising the tension of the audience, before exploding into a joyous and cacophonous sound.<\/p>\n

I listened to a podcast recently where the drummer of the band Supersonic talked about songs where, in a live setting, can put the audience into a full mode of excitement and anticipation because of one simple break in a song. Death Cab achieved this moment because it had the song, and the fans, who braced for that moment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

October 2004, Revolution, For Lauderdale, Fla. There was, for a brief period of time in the mid-aughts, a Sub-Pop musical uprising, where it seemed like every band worth listening to came from a certain grouping. Paced by the popularity of The Postal Service, bands such as The Elected, Rilo Kiley, The Helio Sequence and The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":878,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[127],"class_list":["post-877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-concerts","tag-death-cab-for-cutie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=877"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":879,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/877\/revisions\/879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abandonedcouches.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}