Death Cab for Cutie, with Rogue Wave, the Kooks and the Morning Benders
Friday, 05/30/08
The City Market
Better than: The new Death Cab album
By RICHARD GINTOWT
Click photo to view slideshow
Ah, corporate-sponsored concerts at the City Market – let me count the ways I loathe thee. (1.) Giant inflatable Miller Lite bottles (2.) Sound that only works in certain “hotspots” (much like my wireless internet) (3.) Standing on concrete for five hours (4.) Teenagers.
OK, enough griping. If the Buzz had to pick four bands to convince everyone how hip it is despite playing the shit out of the new Offspring single, it could have done a lot worse than Death Cab for Cutie, Rogue Wave, the Kooks and the Morning Benders. In fact, I dare say that’s a pretty stellar lineup for a night “Under the Stars” (or at least the hazy city skyline).
The Morning Benders took the stage promptly at 7 p.m., which means that a good portion of the crowd missed the chance to see a great new band. These four skinny young’uns hail from sunny Oakland, Cal., and they sound every bit as Vitamin D-happy as fellow Southwesterners the Shins. I picked up the Benders’ new album Talking Through Tin Cans a couple weeks ago and it’s been a real charmer. Singer Chris Chu has a can’t-miss yalp that reminds me a little of James Mercer. The group pens bouncy pop numbers with some nifty guitar licks and great harmonies (both of which were unfortunately lost periodically to shabby sound). Expect these guys to get a lot of well-deserved buzz this year.
Next up was Britain’s the Kooks, who presumably were added to the bill to give Death Cab for Cutie a reason to play “Crooked Teeth” (heya!). I vaguely recall giving the group’s debut In/Inside Out a spin, and after seeing them last night, I know why I quickly put it out of my mind. Singer Luke Pritchard’s I-know-you-want-me-but-I’m-going-to-act-coy stage routine was the first hint of something irritating; the throngs of shrieking teenage girls sealed the deal. Perhaps if I was on a desert island with no preconceptions I might find something to like in the band’s occasionally catchy songbook, but the whole performance added up to too much preening and not enough substance. On the plus side, I now know what band sings those two inane numbers I keep hearing on the radio and telly (“Naïve” and “Shine On”).
Setting the stage for Death Cab was Rogue Wave, a band that has taken a similar path from the elite indie-pop underground to bigger stages. Despite a move to Jack Johnson’s Brushfire Records, bandleader Zach Rogue hasn’t changed much about the band’s sound other than adding some bravado to new cuts like “Harmonium.” The group seems more confident each time I catch them (three times in all), and the slow-burning new album Asleep at Heaven’s Gate seems more accomplished with each pass. Rogue’s voice is nearly as fluid as Ben Gibbard’s, and his musical ideas dart around like a kid in a hip-but-not-too-hip record store.
With the dropping of a curtain to reveal a gorgeous backdrop mimicking the cover art of Narrow Stairs, the reigning kings of good-guy rock music took the stage. After kicking things off with the 41-second number “Bixby, Canyon Bridge,” Death Cab didn’t play another Narrow Stairs cut until the seventh song. It seems that they knew that the crowd was still warming up to the new album, which, barring a miraculous revelation, I’ll likely be warming up to until the end of days. For my tastes, Narrow Stairs is a disappointment; an overblown, melodramatic mess of a record that sounds like a successful band trying to get away from what it does best (writing catchy tunes). Atlantic Records must have shit their pants when they figured out that the album’s best song had a six-minute buildup and one chorus. The crowd seemed to have my back with their lukewarm responses to every new song except “I Will Possess Your Heart.”
Elsewhere, the two-hour set featured a good mix of material: four songs from Plans (2005), five from Transatlanticism (2005), four from The Photo Album (2001) and one from We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes (2000). Here’s the set list:
Bixby, Canyon Bridge
The New Year
Why’d You Want to Live Here
We Laugh Indoors
Photobooth
Crooked Teeth
Long Division
Grapevine Fires
A Movie Script Ending
The Employment Pages
Company Calls
Soul Meets Body
I Will Follow You Into the Dark
I Will Possess Your Heart
Cath…
The Sound of Settling
Marching Bands of Manhattan
Title & Registration
No Sunlight
Styrofoam Plates
Tiny Vessels
Transatlanticism
I hate to be a grump about Narrow Stairs – it is nice to a band following their own whims in the belly of the music-industry beast. Songs like “No Sunlight” and “Cath…” did have more life in the live setting, but they clearly didn’t have people singing along like “Crooked Teeth” or “I Will Follow You Into the Dark.” Gibbard’s lyrics have always been and still are stunning, but his delivery too often seems like a parody of his own inflections. There’s an emo ghost in the closet, and though I’ve never placed Death Cab in that hell-forsaken genre, sometimes I wonder if they’re that far off.
Performance-wise, however, Death Cab’s enthusiastic delivery was an affirmation of why the band resounds with both kids and grown-ups. Bassist Nicholas Harmer and drummer Jason McGerr injected cool nuances into established arrangements, and Gibbard delivered each lyric with perfect precision despite bobbing back and forth like he was playing dodge ball. There’s a calculated ebb-and-flow to Death Cab’s songs as well as its performances. Narrow Stairs, unfortunately, is too much ebb and not enough flow. Here’s hoping there will be more DCFC albums that harness that dynamic as well as Transatlanticism.
Personal bias: I do kind of hate it when I suddenly find myself listening to the same band as a bunch of screaming teenage girls and meaty bro-heims.
Random detail: If the Kooks’ pants were any tighter, they’d be the Strokes.
By the way: Anybody know what an actual Morning Bender is? I’m thinking it has something to do with a fifth of vodka and a Sponge Bob marathon on the Cartoon Network.
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I think using the crowd's response to the new songs on Narrow Stairs is a bad way to judge if it's a good album or not. It's a new album, or course the crowd isn't going to respond to the new songs like their old favorites. It was a Buzz concert..the average person just bought a ticket to hear Crooked Teeth.
Bixby Canyon Bridge is almost 6 mins long.
Bad leaked versions of it on Soulseek have some other horrible DCFC-sounding band doing some 41 second song. I found out the hard way today.
I also went to the show on Friday and thought it was great - bands wise. I will agree the crowd wasn't very receptive for alot of the songs played from Narrow Stairs. I'd also have to agree there were waaaaaaay too many little kids (teenagers, under 18, under 21) and people who really would have had no idea who DCFC even were if it weren't for "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" and "Crooked Teeth". It's also always annoying having to budge for children who know nothing of the band but think because they showed up 4 hours late they can be jerks and push up to the front to see a band they no little about. The band I was most impressed with was Rogue Wave. I was pretty blown away by them.
I went to the show on Friday and I personally thought that Death Cab was amazing. I sang along with every song, and could not believe how awesome they were live. So many bands today sound good on their album, but then you go and see them and you leave dissapointed. Not with Death Cab. And personally, I feel that Narrow Stairs is a great triumph to the power of the band instead of the record company.
I went to the show on Friday and I personally thought that Death Cab was amazing. I sang along with every song, and could not believe how awesome they were live. So many bands today sound good on their album, but then you go and see them and you leave dissapointed. Not with Death Cab. And personally, I feel that Narrow Stairs is a great triumph to the power of the band instead of the record company.
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