The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie W/ Slow Pulp @ Chaifetz Arena – St. Louis, MO

Tuesday night The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie were in town on their Give Up & Transatlanticism 20th Anniversary Tour. Twenty years ago while browsing the magazine rack at a local Borders book store I picked up a the March 1999 CMJ New Music Monthly as it had an article on the state of rock music five years after the death of Kurt Cobain. The great thing about CMJ New Music Monthly was that each issue had a compilation CD in it. One of those tracks was Death Cab for Cutie’s ‘President of What?’ off of their debut album ‘Something About Airplanes’ that was released the previous August. Twenty years, 10 albums, and 7 Grammy nominations later I am still a massive fan. Back in 2004 I caught Death Cab at Mississippi Nights on tour for Transatlanticism so this shiw had a lot of nostalgia for me. I thought back about a time before Facebook was the dominant place and staying up late chatting on band message boards with people all over the world, some who I eventually met, posting and reading things on Myspace or Live Journal/Dead Journal. As for The Postal Service I never was able to catch them live as I was not able to catch them at The Creepy Crawl back in 2003 and they did not play St. Louis on the 10th anniversary tour. Luckily front man of both bands Ben Gibbard did not stick to his words from back in 2013 when he said that the Lollapalooza official festival afterparty shw at the Metro in Chicago “will be our very last. Please come celebrate with us!”. When the 20th anniversary tour was announced I almost went to see them in Denver last year as no St. Louis show was on the original tour but ended up not able to catch the show as I had car trouble.

Tuesday nights show consisted of Death Cab performing Transatlanticism front to back followed by The Postal Service playing Give Up front to back. During the Postal Service set Gibbard told the crowd that when they went to record these albums 20 years ago they thought that they would be listed to by their friends and never expected them to get this big. The night was closed out with an encore of ‘Such Great Heights’ done acoustically amd a cover of ‘Enjoy the Silence’ by Depeche Mode.

The Postal Service