Death Cab For Cutie live!

Death Cab For Cutie
Assembly Hall, Champaign
Sunday, October 12, 2008

Seattle’s Death Cab For Cutie released its first album a decade ago. Comprising smart geeks who write melodic songs, DCFC manages the spectacularly difficult feat of combining quirkiness with muscle. Sunday’s 90-minute-plus set at the Assembly Hall demonstrated just how very good at that Death Cab For Cutie is.

The Assembly Hall is the University Of Illinois’ enormo-dome, a cavernous, round mushroom built in the early ’60s for basketball, hockey, graduation ceremonies — just about anything but music. With concrete floors, concrete walls, plastic seats, and an abundance of metal rigging lining the midpoint between ceiling and floor, it’s hell for soundmen and set designers alike. The bands who keep their backdrops simple and the hall’s echo to a minimum have the most success. Whether by design or cost-saving, DCFC used just that tactic, which pushed the band front and center. Death Cab For Cutie is not arena rock royalty. Ben Gibbard’s voice sounded weak, particularly early in the set, while Chris Walla’s guitar noodling often translated to the audience not as subtle texture, as was likely intended, but instead as arched cliché. They spoke to the audience infrequently and seemed unsure just what to do with all the room a larger stage afforded.

For all the growing pangs, however, the strictures of an arena were also liberating for the band. Spurred by Jason McGerr, a drummer who clearly knows his American rock beats and isn’t afraid to use them, Death Cab flexed its tight, rhythmic muscles across its songbook. Songs like “Soul Meets The Body,” “Long Division,” “The New Year,” and “I Will Posses Your Heart” had a brawniness and power live they don’t on album. The pop shimmer of “Sound Of Settling” came out darker and harder. DCFC may be the current banner carriers for indie rock, but the band that played Sunday night longs to be the exuberant, high-flyin’, “up all night with Freddy King” American Band.

DCFC has the V8 spirit, but not yet the will. Nothing in its set could be considered dangerous. Nothing could remotely be called “edgy.” As good as it is — and it needs to be stressed the band is very good — there nonetheless was a sense, persistently niggling, DCFC has hit a creative wall and is moving laterally along it. They can fiddle with tempo, use more reverb, use less, channel an inner Pink Floyd, XTC, or Beatles, but it can’t push its music into uncharted waters. Should Death Cab For Cutie ever be able to dance on the edge of the precipice, it could become one great American rock band, comin’ to your town to help you party down. Until then, it’ll help you study for finals.

Opening for Death Cab For Cutie was St. Louis’ So Many Dynamos. While So Many Dynamos’ recent smaller gigs in Champaign have won it some fans, judging from the smattering of cheers that greeted some of its numbers, it’s unlikely this set added any. Poorly served by the size of the hall, the music came off as formless, charmless, melody-less, and nuance-less. The band has a solid drummer and genuine energy on stage, but it helps immeasurably to have those work in the service of something. Like a song, for instance. So Many Dynamos just had notes. Lots and lots of notes, none of them particularly going anywhere nor adding up to anything memorable.

— M.S. Dodds

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly