The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard on the legacy of ‘Give Up’ and ‘Transatlanticism’
Ahead of the UK leg of the bands' 20th anniversary tour, Gibbard discusses welcoming a new generation of fans and whether this tour really means the end for The Postal Service.
Ben Gibbard has spoken to Rolling Stone UK about The Postal Service and Death Cab For Cutie’s upcoming UK tour and celebrating the legacies of both acts.
Last year, the two bands began a tour of North America celebrating 20 years of The Postal Service’s sole studio album, Give Up, and Death Cab’s Transatlanticism, both released in 2003. This week, the tour will land in the UK for a short run of shows that ends with a massive London gig as part of All Points East.
In our interview, Gibbard discusses the legacy of the two albums, how Transatlanticism changed everything for Death Cab, welcoming a new generation of fans, and whether this tour really means the end for The Postal Service.
How did you find the US leg of the tour that began last year?
I felt confident that it would go well, but I didn’t have a sense of how overwhelmingly triumphant it would feel. When we put the American shows on sale, we had a Climate Pledge Arena [show] here in Seattle, and we had a Hollywood Bowl, and a Madison Square Garden. I felt confident that we would sell those out, but I was totally blown away that we’d be adding dates. That was just totally insane. I felt confident that it would go well, but it’s one thing to feel confident, it’s another thing to be out playing these shows and watching the crowds have the kind of responses that they ended up having.
The Postal Service last played together in 2013 – have you seen a new, younger generation of at these shows?
It’s tempered by the fact that young people tend to be up close at the shows, and people in my general age group tend to want to be in the back or want a seat! In the last 20 years of being a music fan, how we discover, share and listen to music has changed because of the sheer fact that we are not required to purchase every album that we listen to. Younger generations have the ability to sift through all these things and find the things that they like. It seems clear that Give Up and Transatlanticism have fallen into that category.
You can also never underestimate the power of your parents’ record collection. Speaking for myself, I grew up in a household where The Beatles and AC/DC and The Cars and Devo were all on the time on the stereo. I grew to love those records. Those were quite literally the first records I fell in love with because I was exposed to them as a very young child.
Give Up marks an obvious and sole place in The Postal Service’s discography, but what did Transatlanticism do for Death Cab in 2003?
At the time that Give Up came out, Death Cab were what I thought was a fairly successful American indie rock band. We were selling 50,000 records and playing larger clubs to maybe 800 or 1000 people. We were touring in a van and living the dream, so to speak. We didn’t really consider that there would be anything bigger than this. Then Give Up came out and just became this strange musical cultural phenomenon where it was just selling and selling and selling. We weren’t doing anything or promoting it – it was a true word of mouth, early internet phenomenon.
When Transatlanticism came out, it was odd to be have this side project that was at the time – by the numbers – more successful than anything that Death Cab had done at that point. In the States in 2003, there was this inflection point, not dissimilar to 1991 What would traditionally be called college rock or indie started to become more mainstream. As has become part of the story, there was also this little television show that just came out of nowhere that started putting us in it all the time. We had a slightly complicated relationship with that at the time, but I think looking back on it, radio wasn’t playing Death Cab for Cutie at the time. MTV wasn’t playing our videos. I don’t think we even had a video! Looking back, we’re rather grateful for this strange cultural phenomenon that was beaming our band into kids’ living rooms on network television.
At All Points East, you’re playing with The Decemberists and Sleater-Kinney amongst others – did you have a kinship in the Pacific Northwest with those two bands?
Sleater-Kinney less so, because they were a little older than us. It sounds weird, but when you’re 25 and someone else is 35, that seems like a lot. The Decemberists were early friends of ours and are friends of ours to this day. Chris Walla [ex-Death Cab For Cutie guitarist] produced for them. I remember going to see The Decemberists in 2001 on the recommendation of a friend at this small club on Capitol Hill in Seattle, where I live. There were maybe 50 people there and I remember just being like, ‘Wow, holy shit. This guy’s a great fucking songwriter.’ It wasn’t so much having a sense of thinking this was going to be huge, but I was really blown away by the musicianship and the songwriting. We became allies in music.
I think when scenes are coalescing, or when people write about music scenes, there’s a lot of placing people in the same room who maybe were not actually in the same room, or actually associated with each other, and calling it a scene. There were never any manifestos about what we were trying to accomplish at the time or anything, but we definitely felt as if The Decemberists were a band that we shared a lot of DNA with, and certainly similar ethics.
Finally, are you assuming that this tour will mark the end of The Postal Service?
That would be the most logical conclusion to draw. I feel like I got in trouble… well no, I didn’t get in trouble – I’m a grown man – but there was some pushback when we announced these shows. [People were saying]: ‘You guys said on stage at the Metro in 2013 this was your last show!’ Like, yeah, people say a lot of things. I think that it’s always a never say never, and we’re all good friends, but we’re never making a second record, and at a certain point you need to at least telegraph to the world that we are shutting this thing down, most likely for good, but definitely for a very, very long time.
And it seems like doing that now is going out on a high…
Oh, absolutely. I really would have felt that if the 2013 tour was the last one then we would have accomplished what we set out to. When we toured Give Up in 2003 in the States, we were playing on average 250-capacity clubs. We played some kind of dump in London, which I had never heard of before and haven’t heard of since.
We’re not running a charity here, so I don’t want to give the impression that money is not a factor, but at the same time, I think we realise that there are a lot of people who have relationships with this record and for whom it means a lot. Giving the fans of Give Up one last opportunity to see these songs played live would obviously benefit us financially, but also be spiritually fulfilling for people who this album has meant so much to. It’s meant a lot to us too.