Ben Gibbard live!

Ben Gibbard
Metro, Chicago
Friday, May 4, 2007

“Those guys were kind of obscure.”

Such was the quip delivered onstage by Ben Gibbard during his Friday night, late show at the Metro, following a piano-only cover of Nirvana’s “All Apologies.” While obviously overly ironic, the statement very well could have applied to Gibbard’s full-band/day-job outfit, Death Cab For Cutie.

A few years back, and for a good amount of time, Death Cab were an indie favorite but remained just under the radar — at least until 2003’s Transatlanticism (Barsuk) dropped. Couple that with the continuing longevity of Gibbard’s one-off collaboration with Dntel mastermind Jimmy Tamborello under the title The Postal Service, and it’s no wonder 2005’s Plans (Atlantic) helped Death Cab become a highlight of the first Lollapalooza in Grant Park.

Friday’s late show, however, was a decidedly different scene from any sort of Death Cab extravaganza. Instead, it served as a stark contrast, showcasing Gibbard’s different musical identities — from recent highlights in the Death Cab catalog to rarely performed cult favorites from The Postal Service. In the midst of it all, Gibbard even premiered a new song or two, presumably from an upcoming solo project.

By and large, the evening’s Death Cab material stuck to more recent selections from Transatlanticism and Plans, with occasional exceptions. As most Death Cab arrangements are intended for a full band, or at the very least a guitar performance, they tended to translate better overall than most Postal Service cuts, though exceptions existed on both counts. Death Cab fare like “Your Heart Is An Empty Room” and “A Lack Of Color” survived the transition with plenty of appeal intact, as did The Postal Service’s escapist anthem “Brand New Colony.” Elsewhere, already acoustic-oriented numbers like “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” come remarkably close to their recorded predecessors and not particularly reworked.

Yet many of the evening’s would-be highlights were somewhat dampened by missing elements. Give Up‘s uber dream-pop-esque “Recycled Air,” while a rarity live and a recorded favorite, managed to build, but was unmistakably missing the song’s ambience and beats. Much like the tense and troubled “Title And Registration” suffered from a lack of worried intensity the other members of Death Cab would provide.

For the majority of the evening, Gibbard stuck dutifully to his guitar, in true singer-songwriter fashion. There were, however, exceptions. Throughout his set, Gibbard found time to slip away to a piano onstage, delivering a more sorrowful “Soul Meets Body,” the tender B-side ballad “Blacking Out The Friction,” and the aforementioned Nirvana cover. Yet perhaps one of the most memorable ivory-laden moments of the night was also one of the most sublime. Transatlanticism‘s mellow-even-by-Death-Cab-standards “Passanger Seat” came across even more fragile onstage than it does on record. All at once melancholy and wistful, the song demonstrated just as well as any the night’s secret to Ben Gibbard’s continual appeal: a disarming sense of candor and simultaneous lack of pretense, coupled with a continuing sense of vulnerability.

Yet such obvious revelations only served as that much more of a reminder, with the right collaborators, Gibbard and his tireless supply of haunting confessionals can rise to even greater heights.

— Jaime de’Medici

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly