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The sound of 2003 was the feather-light yearning of Ben Gibbard, nasal frontman of Death Cab for Cutie and the blueprint for every proto-softboi with an unrequited crush and their headphones permanently on. Between Transatlanticism, the band’s fourth album of hazy indie-rock balladry, and the lite electronica of his short-lived but cherished side-project The Postal Service, Gibbard created a safe space for a generalised kind of young-adult melancholy. On paper, it feels doomed – even wrong, somehow – to try and extricate him from a world of Garden State and Seth Cohen and plant him in 2024. Yet here we are: Gibbard and his bands performing to a sea of thirtysomething nostalgia-heads at London’s All Points East festival: Noughties minimalism transplanted to a massive field in Victoria Park. Somehow it works.
This 20th-anniversary tour finds Gibbard playing both Transatlanticism and The Postal Service’s sole record Give Up in full one after another, broken up by a 15-minute interval. For the first part of the set, Gibbard and the rest of Death Cab are dressed in all black, interaction with the crowd at a minimum. Transatlanticism ostensibly revolves around a long-distance relationship, but here many of its lyrics feel apt for a show celebrating an era long shedded. “There’d be no distance that could hold us back,” repeats the bridge of anthemic show-opener “The New Year”, Gibbard speaking directly to a crowd in the midst of sonic time travel.
Highlights of the first 45 minutes include the bouncy “The Sound of Settling”, with its peppy hand-clap chorus, and the blissful “We Looked Like Giants”. It’s the Inception number of the night – a song about nostalgia within a show all about nostalgia – and nicely dedicated to Death Cab’s Noughties compatriots The Decemberists, who performed earlier in the day.
After the intermission, Gibbard returns to the stage – everyone’s dressed now in white – alongside his Postal Service collaborator Jimmy Tamborello and musician Jenny Lewis, who lent Give Up its heavenly background vocals. Gibbard and Lewis are a fun pair of oppositional forces on stage – think the mathematics nerd and the earth goddess – the latter all Stevie Nicks spins and soft cooing, the former lightly shuffling on his feet next to her.
Every Lewis line inspires cheers. “Such Great Heights”, a synth-pop track so full of urgency and heart-monitor beeps that it was at one point mooted to be the Grey’s Anatomy theme song, is an early spectacle. So is the Gibbard/Lewis back-and-forth of “Nothing Better”, a moody wallow in breakup ennui. Give Up is sadly a little more front-loaded a record than Transatlanticism, meaning this is a track-by-track setlist that dips as it goes along – it’s no wonder the encore is an acoustic reprise of “Such Great Heights”, followed by a banger of a cover of Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”.
In the crowd, tears are shed, clusters of people dance, and memories are rekindled. The show as a whole serves as a reminder of Gibbard’s endurance, too. His moment of cultural ubiquity launched a thousand pale imitators, every dork with a synthesiser briefly thinking they could be a rock star. But when was the last time anybody went to an Owl City show? At Victoria Park, the presence of his bands inspires a joy as upbeat as it is wistful – everyone’s older, and probably living lives they never particularly imagined back when they listened to these records for the first time. But still, we all made it, didn’t we?
