death cab for cutie + youth group|cordiner hall, walla walla, wa|october 5, 2005
This review picks up where today’s Pioneer article about the Death Cab concert leaves off: actually reviewing the concert itself. Unlike our fine colleauges at the Pioneer, this retrospective will not concentrate on the tools working security, but rather, the music and performance itself.
With a lulling vibe and a particularly boring stage presence, Australia’s Youth Group took to the stage and assumed the static, uninspired poses in which they remained for the rest of the gig. Perhaps most unmoved, though, were the 1000+ audience members, who remained seated as the band attempted to stun them with a midly impressive wall-of-sound. The most lively and notable cuts from Youth Group early in the evening were “Skeleton Jar”, with its subdued pounding drums and jangly guitar riff, and “Shadowland”, a midnight anthem that had many in the audience standing and even, I dare say it, dancing. Needless to say, however, neither of these songs were par for the Youth Group course, as the rest of their performance was replete with uninspired and hookless soft rock that, if anything, served as more of an opening wet blanket than a heating pad for Death Cab.
After I had gotten my nerd-rock glasses and emo track-jacket on, I felt equipped to run up to the front rows where my friends were waiting. There were many seats in the front rows that were ‘claimed’ by various members of the audience, though it became very clear later in the performance that no one would ever come up and fill them. It was precisely this awkward assertion of private property over collective seating in a general admission venue that led me to believe that emo kids either are really good friends with losers who forget to come to shows, are claustrophobic, or are just pure assholes. Nevertheless, at approximately 9:37 PM in Cordiner Hall, all animosity towards my fellow concert goers was forgotten, as the congenial, yet unshaven, Ben Gibbard took to the stage accompanied by his 3 Death Cabbies.
Foreshadowing the content of much of their performance, Gibbard the frontman, Walla the Guitarist, Harmer the Bassist, and McGerr the Drummer went straight into the first track off their new album, Plans, entitled “Marching Bands of Manhattan”. Although “Manhattan” certainly demonstrates the new restraint Death Cab have used over their pure indie rock influences, I was genuinely surprised at the buildup of the song, if not overwhelmed by the poundingly rollicking end to the song. This lead me to believe that maybe Death Cab had not lost their indie edge after all, even three albums out from their 2000 masterpiece, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes.
The ‘Cab followed-up with the first track off of their last album, “New Year”. This track, alternatingly anthemic and disco, sounded wonderful in the reverb-friendly Cordiner Hall, and I wondered if it would have sounded like this had I bought the Super-Audio Digital copy of the album way back when. The next song, “We Laugh Indoors”, is a Death Cab show regular, featuring McGerr’s mastery of the kick-drum, Walla’s sonic manipulation of his Stratocaster to sound like a screeching albatross, and Gibbard’s repitition of “I loved you , Guinevere” in a build-up to the most rock breakdown part of the evening.
The new material took up a considerable chunk of Death Cab’s set, and was usually featured in chunks rather than intertwined with the older, more indie, parts of their repertoire. “Soul Meets Body” saw the band sounding like R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” for the first couple of notes, with Gibbard’s vocals skyrocketing up into the upper registers of his falsetto. Perhaps the funniest part of the show for me was when Walla backed up Gibbard in the same register, coming out “when soul meets baaaaahhh-deeeeee” and looking hilarious while doing it. The other notable song from the new album Plans was “Crooked Teeth”, which jangled along like a Shins song without losing the Death Cab-Cute Factor that drives girls mad. Somewhere around this point, a member of the front crowd threw a teddy bear at Walla, symbolizing the degree to which the teenage-girl demographic has embraced Death Cab’s new and deliberately huggy-bear sound.
The best parts of the evening, and I’ll confess that I am a fan of their older material, were “Company Calls” and “Photobooth”, two songs from the We Have the Facts era of Death Cab that preferred texture and experimentation over the current fixed fascination with the beyond and wooing the OC crowd. Don’t’ get me wrong, I wish Death Cab only the best in their major-label journey and I’m proud to have been an early fan, but let’s just say I have my favorites. I will say that although few people seemed to recognize the earlier tracks, the audience was very receptive and even responsive to the older stuff.
The only problems Death Cab encountered in the show were largely technical matters that can probably be attributed to early tour syndrome. One example is the murky beginning to “Title and Registration” early in the show, which led to a complete restart of the song and took away from the initial reaction of the crowd that usually happens just from recognizing a favorite song. Later in the song, Walla seemed to have forgotten his important keyboard solo until the very very last second, when he threw is guitar and leapt behind the organ with a big, embarrassed grin. The song did sound great, though.
So a fine concert from Death Cab, if not the life-changing event the ASWC Public Events chair had promised me. The concert was not nearly as magical or intimate as their Whitman performance in February 2003, but needless to say, the band has changed and so has their audience.
