Speaker 1: Pushkin. In September, Ben Gibbard, the founder of Death Cab
Speaker 1: for CUTI, will set out on a nationwide tour to
Speaker 1: celebrate two very different albums that have come to define
Speaker 1: his career. Both albums came out in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: The first was called Give Up, and it was a
Speaker 1: collaboration with his friend and producer Jimmy Tamborello. They'd made
Speaker 1: it while Gibberd was taking a break from the relentless
Speaker 1: cycle of touring and releasing music with Deathcab. They called
Speaker 1: their new band The Postal Service. Give Up steadily built momentum,
Speaker 1: found critical acclaim, and eventually became Gibberd's first platinum selling record. Musically,
Speaker 1: The Postal Service incorporated various synth and New Wave inspired
Speaker 1: elements behind Gibberd's confessional songwriting style, which set a precedent
Speaker 1: for many of the indie and electronic releases over the
Speaker 1: following days. Later that same year, Gibbert went back to
Speaker 1: his band roots and released Death Cab for Cuti's breakthrough album, Transatlanticism.
Speaker 1: This fall, Gibbert AND's band will play both Transatlanticism and
Speaker 1: Give Up in their entirety. For someone who listened to
Speaker 1: both of these records incessantly in two thousand and three
Speaker 1: and four. I'm excited to say he'll also play three
Speaker 1: acoustic conditions of songs from those classic records in this episode.
Speaker 1: In today's episode, I also talked to Ben Gibbert about
Speaker 1: the conditions that led to the most successful year of
Speaker 1: his career, and he gets candid about the woman who
Speaker 1: inspired multiple songs on Transatlanticism, including the brutally honest Tiny Vessels.
Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Mitchman. Here's my interview with Ben Gibbert. Man.
Speaker 1: Thanks for doing this.
Speaker 2: Oh dude, I'm stoked to be here. Thanks for having
Speaker 2: me man.
Speaker 1: I can't believe it's been twenty years since both of
Speaker 1: these records, Translanticism and the Postal Service Record.
Speaker 2: Yeah, time certainly seems to be moving quicker the older
Speaker 2: I get. I felt like just yesterday we passed the
Speaker 2: ten year anniversary.
Speaker 1: That really does feel like yesterday. That tour I went to,
Speaker 1: I saw that tour, and that feels literally like yesterday
Speaker 1: or a year ago or two, you know, not ten.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I think we get a pass for the pandemic.
Speaker 2: I think I'm now referring to things that happened in
Speaker 2: my life as if they happened six months ago, but
Speaker 2: they happened in the fall of twenty nineteen. Time has
Speaker 2: become this very amorphous kind of element in my life
Speaker 2: since the pandemic, and I think that might be one
Speaker 2: of the reasons that ten years ago does feel like
Speaker 2: it wasn't that long ago.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is, for me was in hindsight understanding
Speaker 1: that you felt that this period of your life two
Speaker 1: thousand and three was also pretty special, because it was
Speaker 1: special for my relationship to your music. I had stray
Speaker 1: Death Cab tracks leading up to the Postal Service record release.
Speaker 1: But I remember my thirteenth birthday being under a record
Speaker 1: store and the guy being and like, you need to
Speaker 1: check out this Postal Service record. I've never heard of it.
Speaker 4: He goes, this is this is Ben Gibberd from Death
Speaker 4: Cab for CUTI I really okay, I'm ga and he's
Speaker 4: like yeah, and see he's got beats behind explained it
Speaker 4: to me and it's kind of like the weirdest thing,
Speaker 4: but he wouldn't let me leave.
Speaker 1: I think I bought something else just in case I
Speaker 1: didn't like it, but he wouldn't let me leave without
Speaker 1: also buying that. My mom gave me some money, bought it,
Speaker 1: took it home, put it on, and from those first
Speaker 1: opening chords of the District sleeps Alone, my mind was blown.
Speaker 1: It was hard to believe to process that it was
Speaker 1: you from Death Cab for Cutie making this kind of music.
Speaker 1: What were the first songs you wrote for that record?
Speaker 2: I think that the first thing we did might have
Speaker 2: been District sleeps Alone Tonight, the first song on the record,
Speaker 2: because the project had kind of come out of Jimmy
Speaker 2: and my collaboration for his record that he did under
Speaker 2: the name Didn't Tell, and he had a bunch of
Speaker 2: people doing guest vocals on it, and through a mutual friend,
Speaker 2: he got a hold of me and asked me to
Speaker 2: do a tune with him, and that went so well
Speaker 2: that we just kind of decided, like, well, why, yeah,
Speaker 2: do you want to do like an EP of this
Speaker 2: or like do some more songs. This was kind of
Speaker 2: relatively effortless and really fun, so I believe it was.
Speaker 2: I believe District was the first thing that he sent me,
Speaker 2: and yeah, we were just kind of off and running.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: The interesting thing about give up to me is that
Speaker 2: there there weren't any other songs recorded for it. It
Speaker 2: was literally just those songs that we had were the record,
Speaker 2: and we were you know, I believe that we had
Speaker 2: signed to Subpop based off of that didn't tell song,
Speaker 2: and I believe the district sleeps Alone Tonight and maybe
Speaker 2: one other song like Sleeping In or something like that.
Speaker 2: But we we basically had a deal with Subpop before
Speaker 2: we had a record.
Speaker 1: Did you guys approach Subpop or did they just happened
Speaker 1: to hear some of this stuff?
Speaker 2: Well, Tony Kewell, who was doing an R for them
Speaker 2: at the time, who's now still with the company, but
Speaker 2: I think I believe he's a vice president or something.
Speaker 2: Jimmy and Tony had gone to Loyola University together and
Speaker 2: they DJs.
Speaker 1: At caxlun from Subpop, Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Tony had gotten word of the project from
Speaker 2: Jimmy just them being friends. And my understanding of it
Speaker 2: was that Tony took some of these early demos in
Speaker 2: and just said, hey, this is you know Ben from Deathcab,
Speaker 2: Jimmy from Dintel. They're doing a record, you know, should
Speaker 2: we put it out? And you know, everybody at least
Speaker 2: enough people agreed to say yes that we ended up
Speaker 2: signing with Subpop, So that was I mean, looking back
Speaker 2: on it as as I'm telling the story right now,
Speaker 2: it seems I still kind of can't believe that it
Speaker 2: happened that way. That's not how bands tend to get signed, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe maybe more so now than before, in
Speaker 2: the sense that you can put out a song on
Speaker 2: band camp or on YouTube or SoundCloud or whatever, and
Speaker 2: somebody can find it and then it might end in
Speaker 2: some kind of record deal. But in two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, that's not how shit went down.
Speaker 2: So you know, at that time, if you were in
Speaker 2: a band, you were playing show, you had a repertoire material,
Speaker 2: and maybe somebody from a label saw you and then
Speaker 2: we were like, you guys are great, we should do
Speaker 2: a record together. But it's almost as if the way
Speaker 2: the Pulservice ended up on Subpop, you know, is more
Speaker 2: the way in which maybe sometimes people get signed now
Speaker 2: than it was twenty years ago.
Speaker 1: Well, it's also like was way ahead of the way
Speaker 1: that people make music, you know, it's much more into
Speaker 1: the way people make music now. In two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: that record felt it felt like we hadn't heard anything
Speaker 1: like that record before, and then by like twenty ten,
Speaker 1: it felt like that was kind of the way a
Speaker 1: lot of people were making music, like like a singer songwriters,
Speaker 1: a lot of indie artists, there's electronic elements included. And
Speaker 1: then you guys were really kind of like ahead of
Speaker 1: that wave. I mean, there were people before, but to
Speaker 1: have done it as sort of as tastefully as you
Speaker 1: guys did it, I don't know that. I don't know
Speaker 1: that I had heard that really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think in some ways we were before our time,
Speaker 2: not in the sense that we were doing anything radically new,
Speaker 2: but that electro pop as a medium for indie rockers
Speaker 2: had not really come into fashion yet. And you know,
Speaker 2: when I think about give up and I think about
Speaker 2: influences going into it, I mean we were referencing depeche
Speaker 2: Mode and OMD and Yeahs and a lot of Human
Speaker 2: League like stuff that was we kind of grew up
Speaker 2: on as dudes who are now in our mid late forties,
Speaker 2: growing up in the eighties with this first kind of
Speaker 2: wave of post craftwork, kind of synthpop, where all of
Speaker 2: these kind of young people in the late seventies early
Speaker 2: eighties were realizing they could take this new technology and
Speaker 2: make pop songs out of it. And then, it seems
Speaker 2: from my perspective, and you know, there might be some
Speaker 2: listeners who would push back on this, I might not
Speaker 2: be entirely correct in this, but it felt like by
Speaker 2: the late nineties early aughts that electronic music had become
Speaker 2: very much like a connoisseur's music and like a process
Speaker 2: oriented underground music. There weren't a lot of people making
Speaker 2: pop songs with electronics at that point, at least not
Speaker 2: anywhere near even like what would be considered the mainstream
Speaker 2: of indie rock at that time. So I just kind
Speaker 2: of feel like we were in the right place at
Speaker 2: the right time, revitalizing a style of music that enough
Speaker 2: people were familiar with to make it feel like it
Speaker 2: was something that they could kind of understand fairly easily,
Speaker 2: but that had been out of the vocabulary long enough
Speaker 2: that it felt new and fresh.
Speaker 1: I would even say, because you're right, like when you
Speaker 1: referenced in like Human League and all those groups that
Speaker 1: I guess were influences on that project, But you know,
Speaker 1: there was a tenderness to it that I don't think
Speaker 1: i'd heard in like electropop before, and like a focus
Speaker 1: on songwriting that I don't know anywhere as in those
Speaker 1: other forms. It feels like the music wasn't just the
Speaker 1: track or just the production, but it was really focused
Speaker 1: around the production. And I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 1: if it's that it was a combination of Jimmy, who
Speaker 1: was sort of more the person who had produced the track,
Speaker 1: and you were more coming really from a songwriting from
Speaker 1: a band perspective. That really helped it fuse the two.
Speaker 1: But I don't know that i'd heard like electronic music
Speaker 1: in that way with the kind of that beautiful crafted
Speaker 1: song quality.
Speaker 2: Well, I appreciate you saying that, as I still keep
Speaker 2: coming back to my position that I just think that
Speaker 2: we were kind of the first people to kind of
Speaker 2: connect these two, Yeah, connect these dots like a confessional,
Speaker 2: kind of emotive style of songwriting that I guess now
Speaker 2: have become known for but certainly was kind of development
Speaker 2: at that point in my career, and then melding it
Speaker 2: with Jimmy's kind of sense of you know, give up
Speaker 2: as an avant garde record by any stretch of the imagination,
Speaker 2: but you know, Jimmy's coming from an experimental electronic background,
Speaker 2: but also with this kind of very great ear for
Speaker 2: pop songs. And you know, there are a couple of
Speaker 2: moments on the record that are a little bit kind
Speaker 2: of out there, but for the most part, it's a
Speaker 2: pretty straightforward pop record. And Jimmy gets a lot of
Speaker 2: that credit too, because he was sending me these things.
Speaker 2: Until I worked with Jimmy, I'd never collaborate with anybody
Speaker 2: in that fashion where somebody would send me music and
Speaker 2: I would write melody and lyrics and additional arrangement over
Speaker 2: top of it. At that time, I was very much
Speaker 2: priding myself and being like the songwriter in the band
Speaker 2: in Death Cabin, as a young person who was insecure,
Speaker 2: very kind of staunchly protective of my role in the
Speaker 2: band for fear that if anybody else were to write
Speaker 2: a note of it, then somehow I would cease being
Speaker 2: the song or in a band or whatever bullshit, that
Speaker 2: whatever kind of ridiculous position that I took at the
Speaker 2: time being a young insecure person. But with Jimmy, I
Speaker 2: found that, having had half the work done for me,
Speaker 2: I could merely just react to what I was hearing,
Speaker 2: so I would. You know, he would send me a
Speaker 2: CD with one or two instrumentals on it, and I
Speaker 2: would put it in a CD walkman, and just walk
Speaker 2: around Seattle for hours at a time, just kind of
Speaker 2: humming to myself. Or I might keep like a little
Speaker 2: notebook my pocket and write a lyric, idea down or whatever,
Speaker 2: and I would just kind of go for these long
Speaker 2: walks and just listening to these tracks over and over again,
Speaker 2: you know, having no way to record a melody, or
Speaker 2: I didn't have it. I didn't have an iPhone of course,
Speaker 2: so I couldn't just sing into the voice notes or whatever.
Speaker 2: But you know, the songs would I would just kind
Speaker 2: of react to what he was sending me in The
Speaker 2: imagery that the music kind of provided me became a
Speaker 2: fairly easy jumping off point to write the narrative of
Speaker 2: the song, which I found to be really liberating. It
Speaker 2: took me to some places lyrically that I'd not found
Speaker 2: myself in, and as I said, it was easier doing
Speaker 2: half the work, So you know, it just allowed me
Speaker 2: the space to be writing transit leenticism and also writing
Speaker 2: my half of give Up, because they weren't in conflict
Speaker 2: with each other. Like I was at home with a
Speaker 2: guitar trying to write songs for trans Lenticism or what
Speaker 2: would become Translanticism, and then I would get a CD
Speaker 2: in the mail from Jimmy on say a Thursday, and
Speaker 2: be like, oh cool, Jimmy sent me a song. Oh
Speaker 2: I'm gonna work on that today, and then I do that,
Speaker 2: and then I would go back on Friday and get
Speaker 2: back to working on the thing I was working on before.
Speaker 1: And was there any creative bleed between the two, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, as you were working on the both simultaneously,
Speaker 1: were you ever at a point conflating ideas or having
Speaker 1: stuff that you had written on say a Friday for
Speaker 1: Translanticism and by the next week you're working on some
Speaker 1: stuff with Jimmy and maybe that idea is going over
Speaker 1: there or was it pretty segmented in your brain?
Speaker 2: It was very segmented, probably because back to being like
Speaker 2: a young, insecure person. The guys in Deathcab knew I
Speaker 2: was doing this record with Jimmy, and it wasn't so
Speaker 2: much that I felt a conflict of interest, as much
Speaker 2: as I didn't want to give anybody in the band
Speaker 2: the idea that I was prioritizing a quote good idea
Speaker 2: unquote to this side project over my main band. So
Speaker 2: I lived in a particular kind of type of fear
Speaker 2: that I guess what I did want to do is
Speaker 2: turn in a bunch of demos to the Death Cab
Speaker 2: dudes and be like, here's what I've been writing recently,
Speaker 2: and have them fixate on one particular song and be
Speaker 2: like that one's the best one, and then for me
Speaker 2: to be like, oh, actually, now that one's off the table,
Speaker 2: because you know, I used a bunch of the lyrics
Speaker 2: for this post service song. So in order to not
Speaker 2: have that even be remotely an issue, I was only
Speaker 2: writing to the stuff that Jimmy was sending me and
Speaker 2: trying to allow those songs to be very kind of
Speaker 2: separate thoughts away from anything that I was doing writing
Speaker 2: for what would become Transatlanticism.
Speaker 1: And you felt like that that process did take you somewhere,
Speaker 1: segmenting the two writing processes between the Death Cab upcoming
Speaker 1: Death Cab record, Translanticism and the postal service stuff, and
Speaker 1: then only writing too Jimmy's track that took you to
Speaker 1: places lyrically you hadn't necessarily been or hadn't mind before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I could never fathom writing a song
Speaker 2: like sleep In or Clark Gable for Death Cab, you
Speaker 2: know those songs in particular, But just something like sleeping
Speaker 2: In is kind of like a it's kind of an
Speaker 2: absurd thought, you know, it's kind of an absurd lyric,
Speaker 2: kind of a whimsical daydream of a lyric.
Speaker 1: That really resonated with the thirteen year old I'm telling, Oh, really, okay,
Speaker 1: that's what I was doing, was sleeping In.
Speaker 2: That's great, I'm glad to hear that. But it's that's
Speaker 2: I've realized. I've only realized I think I realized at
Speaker 2: the time, but I've definitely gotten an appreciation for it
Speaker 2: since then, that I never would have picked up a
Speaker 2: pen and wrote lyrics like I did for Sleeping In
Speaker 2: a top of anything.
Speaker 1: I'd be writing for Death Cab myself.
Speaker 2: So, you know, for whatever reason, kind of just the
Speaker 2: tone of what Jimmy was sending me allowed each song
Speaker 2: to be its own separate thought that could exist away
Speaker 2: from Death Cab and not kind of come into conflict
Speaker 2: creatively with what I was doing over here.
Speaker 1: What do you think lyric like what in Sleeping In?
Speaker 1: Or Clark Gable. What in those lyrics are so whimsical
Speaker 1: to that you couldn't have imagined, you know, those being
Speaker 1: Death Cab lyrics.
Speaker 2: I suppose it's because I couldn't see myself getting if
Speaker 2: I was sitting in this room with a guitar writing
Speaker 2: a song right now or it's not right now in
Speaker 2: two thousand and one or two thousand and two, and
Speaker 2: the idea came to me to write a song about
Speaker 2: recreating the best parts of a relationship as a way
Speaker 2: to kind of make one's self feel good about how
Speaker 2: the relationship had deteriorated, as is kind of the story
Speaker 2: of Clark Gable. That would seem to me to be
Speaker 2: a ridiculous thing to write a song about, especially given
Speaker 2: the kind of music that I was writing with Death Cab,
Speaker 2: which tended to be a lot sparser.
Speaker 1: A lot slower, you know.
Speaker 2: I remember turning in the demo for a sound of
Speaker 2: settling song on Translanticism, and it was a lot slower.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like bing bing bing bing bing
Speaker 2: bing bing, like kind of a more mid tempo maybe
Speaker 2: ninety BP kind of kind of vibe. Because I had
Speaker 2: this aversion towards fast songs I thought that songs that
Speaker 2: were like uptempo were not cool or something, And I
Speaker 2: suppose that was probably a result of kind of coming
Speaker 2: of age with slint and shipping news and codeine and
Speaker 2: low and kind of having the slow core kind of
Speaker 2: thing be a large part of my early musical vocabulary.
Speaker 2: That I thought that fast songs like weren't cool, So
Speaker 2: I would never felt have felt I would have been
Speaker 2: able to pull off a lyric like Clark Gable or
Speaker 2: Sleeping In because of just the tone of the lyric
Speaker 2: against the music that I was writing that was a
Speaker 2: little bit slower, sadder, sparser. A lyric like that would
Speaker 2: draw too much of attention to itself at ninety bpm.
Speaker 2: But when when it's like in kind of more of
Speaker 2: like a club banger, it might it might be equally
Speaker 2: kind of farcical, but at least there's other elements of
Speaker 2: the thing to focus on.
Speaker 1: If you think the lyrics suck, you know, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really Clark Gable. I was listening to it again,
Speaker 1: obviously because we're going to be talking, and I was like, man,
Speaker 1: Clark Gabe, I'd never picked up on it, and I
Speaker 1: hadn't listen to the record, maybe since the last tenth anniversary,
Speaker 1: like in a real way where I was really sitting
Speaker 1: down to listen. But there's like a like a disco
Speaker 1: groove on the base going on Clark Gable. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like it. It's like absurd in a way, but
Speaker 1: it completely it all works. I love how eclectic the
Speaker 1: record is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny with that song. There's a good friend
Speaker 2: of mine named Thomas Moore who has a wonderful label
Speaker 2: in Berlin called More Music, and you know a lot
Speaker 2: of the stuff they were putting out in the turn
Speaker 2: of the century like Lollypuna, Miss John Soda, b Fleshman
Speaker 2: and a lot of this stuff that was kind of
Speaker 2: this like early melding of electronics in indie rock. And
Speaker 2: I remember when I first met Thomas, he was I
Speaker 2: believe he was friends with Jimmy or they knew each other.
Speaker 2: In his very German way, he was like, yeah, I
Speaker 2: listened to that Postal Sabas record and I hated that
Speaker 2: song clock Gable so much.
Speaker 1: I just hated it.
Speaker 2: And I was just like okay, man, like yeah, it's
Speaker 2: like any because it was so discally and like I
Speaker 2: didn't like it, and it was like and it's it's funny,
Speaker 2: how like whenever we play that song, I guess we
Speaker 2: haven't played it very often, but like when we were
Speaker 2: playing on the last tour, and we'll probably when we
Speaker 2: do in the next four I'll always kind of Thomas
Speaker 2: will always kind of pop up in my mind of
Speaker 2: his brutal honesty about what he thought about that song,
Speaker 2: because of everything about it is pretty over the top,
Speaker 2: you know, and it's like.
Speaker 1: Also not over the top, I don't know, but at
Speaker 1: least not by today's standards.
Speaker 2: No, not by today's standards, but you know, it's like
Speaker 2: there wasn't anything musically similar to it at the time.
Speaker 2: At least elements of that song had existed beforehand, as
Speaker 2: we've already discussed. But what I thought was so great
Speaker 2: about Jimmy sending that song and it was just like
Speaker 2: it was really just anything goes. I mean, there was
Speaker 2: no you know, we weren't making this record thinking that
Speaker 2: anybody was really gonna hear it, aside from the people
Speaker 2: who maybe were already fans of Jimmy's and people who
Speaker 2: were Deathcat fans. I might be curious about this project.
Speaker 1: But before you get the subpop deal, I mean was
Speaker 1: there a world where you were just doing this for
Speaker 1: fun and no one would have heard this, Like, was
Speaker 1: did you guys start collaborating with the idea that we
Speaker 1: will put something out or was it let's just have fun?
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've always been a pretty destination oriented person.
Speaker 2: So we were talking about initially like doing a couple
Speaker 2: more songs or an EP or something.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: There were a couple of small labels that were around
Speaker 2: in our kind of circle of friends that were like,
Speaker 2: oh I put that out, Yeah, let us know if
Speaker 2: you want to put that out. So not that everything
Speaker 2: I've written has been written with the goal of releasing it,
Speaker 2: of course, like I've written way more music that hasn't
Speaker 2: been released than has. But at that time I certainly
Speaker 2: felt cocky enough to think that what we would be
Speaker 2: making would be good enough that somebody would want to
Speaker 2: put it out. And I guess at the time I
Speaker 2: didn't see the point in just making music with somebody
Speaker 2: else that without without the goal of having it be
Speaker 2: out in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just felt like, well, yeah, if we're making
Speaker 1: a record, let's make a record. You know, Let's let's
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: Let's let's go in with a goal in mind, and
Speaker 2: if we fall short of that goal, that's fine, but
Speaker 2: at least we weren't just, you know, dicking around.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I love playing music, I love writing music, but I'm
Speaker 2: I'm very I've always been in awe of people who
Speaker 2: are professional musicians who make music for fun, if this
Speaker 2: makes any sense, Like I remember we years ago we
Speaker 2: played Neil Young's Bridge School benefit and over and Gillian
Speaker 2: Welsh and David Rawlings, who are two of my favorite musicians,
Speaker 2: two of my favorite people. I love the records they
Speaker 2: were playing as well, and they were just off in
Speaker 2: the corner at a party, just playing music.
Speaker 1: The whole was this party at Neil's ranch. Yeah it's
Speaker 1: ranch amazing, like the pre Bridge School ranch party, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2: And they and they weren't playing music necessarily for anybody
Speaker 2: other than themselves and whomever might just kind of stumble
Speaker 2: into the room. And I just was really taken with that.
Speaker 2: And there was a part of me that wished I
Speaker 2: could have that relationship to music. But I've never had
Speaker 2: that relationship to it. It's always been a tool. It's
Speaker 2: always been a tool of expression and not necessarily something
Speaker 2: to do to past time. Or to like have fun,
Speaker 2: not to say that they don't have fun playing music,
Speaker 2: but if you and I were in a room and
Speaker 2: you're like, what do you want to do right now?
Speaker 2: It's like, I don't know, you want to play some
Speaker 2: Kinks songs, and I'd be like, no, let's do something else.
Speaker 2: I don't want to play somebody else's songs. You know
Speaker 2: that's because you don't consider yourself a guitar player, really, right, No,
Speaker 2: I do not know.
Speaker 6: I'm definitely not, which is probably which is crazy to me,
Speaker 6: but also it's probably why like that, I think that
Speaker 6: has to come from well maybe not, but primarily it
Speaker 6: seems in life that comes from the people who fancy
Speaker 6: themselves guitar players.
Speaker 2: You know, it might be Yeah, I also don't know
Speaker 2: a lot of songs.
Speaker 6: I don't.
Speaker 2: I know my songs, and then a handful of songs
Speaker 2: by some of my favorite bands or songwriters. But I'm
Speaker 2: really bad at knowing what the lyrics are to songs
Speaker 2: that I haven't written. I often get them wrong, even
Speaker 2: songs that have been my favorite songs since I was
Speaker 2: a teenager. Five or six years ago, I was making
Speaker 2: this record, I was covering all of teenage fan clubs
Speaker 2: band I can ask who are my favorite band? And
Speaker 2: this record, well, I don't think it's their best record,
Speaker 2: is my favorite of theirs because of where it came
Speaker 2: into my life at the time it did. And I
Speaker 2: was still like emailing Norman Blake from time to time
Speaker 2: asking him like, what is the lyric in that song?
Speaker 3: How does that one go?
Speaker 2: Because and I felt foolish even asking him because this
Speaker 2: I've been listening to this record at that point for
Speaker 2: over about, you know, thirty years, And I realized in
Speaker 2: attempting to play these songs that I didn't actually know.
Speaker 1: Many of them.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what the lyrics were, I didn't know
Speaker 2: what the chords were.
Speaker 1: So were you not like when you were first starting
Speaker 1: to write songs? Were you not? It seems like a
Speaker 1: lot of people the process of learning to write songs
Speaker 1: is like playing other people's songs and then like just
Speaker 1: modifying or making them your own, or modifying or changing
Speaker 1: a couple you know, like early on at least, was
Speaker 1: that not How you got into making music, was doing
Speaker 1: like covers and things a.
Speaker 2: Little bit, but it was, you know, it was like
Speaker 2: a high school band, like poorly trying to our bad
Speaker 2: brains pay to Come, or you know, some bad religion
Speaker 2: song or like a you know, whatever it was.
Speaker 1: It was that kind of shit.
Speaker 2: It was like nothing, you know, For whatever reason, I've
Speaker 2: never had this desire to pull songs.
Speaker 1: Apart and see how they work. Okay. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: I'm going to like learn Beatles core.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, I mean, I guess I did. When I
Speaker 2: was learning how to play guitar. I I taught myself
Speaker 2: from a Beatles fake book originally, and where you would
Speaker 2: have the picture of the chords of the chord and
Speaker 2: where I put your fingers and nine is like this, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: and these guys have really weird chords. So I guess,
Speaker 2: and I guess, I guess I'm lying a bit. I
Speaker 2: guess I did some of that, but it didn't it
Speaker 2: didn't feel as if I was doing it for educational
Speaker 2: purposes as much as I was. I just wanted to
Speaker 2: sing the song, yeah, you know, or I just I
Speaker 2: just wanted.
Speaker 1: To play guitar, you know.
Speaker 2: And I didn't have I hadn't writen any of my
Speaker 2: own songs, So I guess these Beatles songs will have
Speaker 2: to do, you know. I guess I guess here, there
Speaker 2: and everywhere will have to do you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you talked.
Speaker 1: About well, well, first of all, before we go back
Speaker 1: into the records, tell me about the about Bridge School
Speaker 1: and about that that party at Neil's ranch beforehand. Being
Speaker 1: a person who's like, I'm not going to go off
Speaker 1: and play guitar on a corner, it feels like it
Speaker 1: feels very much like that's what's happening around that weekend.
Speaker 1: So was it like a weird thing to take part in?
Speaker 1: It was wild, I mean at that I think this
Speaker 1: was two thousand and six. So we we had in
Speaker 1: two thousand and four we had done some touring with
Speaker 1: Pearl Jam, and Neil had come out for some of
Speaker 1: those shows. And you know, this tour if people are
Speaker 1: not familiar with it, which of course why would they be.
Speaker 2: It was twenty years ago. It was called the Vote
Speaker 2: for Change Tour. And there are a number of kind
Speaker 2: of legacy acts and huge names, all descending upon swing
Speaker 2: states and playing a concert in a particular swing state
Speaker 2: on the same day. So Pearl Jam and you know us,
Speaker 2: we might be playing in Columbus. Uh, you know Ram
Speaker 2: and Bruce Springsteen are They're playing in Cincinnati.
Speaker 1: So and so is playing here, and so on and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 2: Right, so that was kind of the big voter registration drive,
Speaker 2: and you know, we were going to defeat Bush and
Speaker 2: everything else. And so that was the first my first
Speaker 2: experience or our first experience with being around like really
Speaker 2: famous musicians, and that was incredibly nerve racking at first,
Speaker 2: and we felt, you know, it's like very you know,
Speaker 2: being around somebody like Bruce Springsteen, even just for an
Speaker 2: hour at some kind of presser, was just like, holy shit,
Speaker 2: that's Bruce Springsteen, and be cool, man, don't don't ask
Speaker 2: him any dumb.
Speaker 1: Questions, you know.
Speaker 2: And so by the time we did Bridge School in
Speaker 2: two thousand and six, it wasn't as if being around
Speaker 2: people like that had certainly not become normal, but we
Speaker 2: were a little bit less self conscious and nervous. And
Speaker 2: it's not like we we certainly didn't feel like we
Speaker 2: belonged there, but that at least we realized that we
Speaker 2: were invited there, right, So people had invited us, they
Speaker 2: wanted us to be there, so it would be okay
Speaker 2: to go up to date role and like say hey man,
Speaker 2: how's it going, and not have him or anybody else
Speaker 2: be like I'm sorry, who do you think you are
Speaker 2: talking to me? You know, everybody was super specific thing
Speaker 2: that happened there, Like did you meet Dave Grohl there?
Speaker 3: Uh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I met. I met Grole there. I met because
Speaker 2: that was really great. I mean, that was an incredible year.
Speaker 2: I think that year it was Neil of course, Pearl
Speaker 2: Jam Trent Reznor was played with a prepared piano and
Speaker 2: a string section. Brian Wilson played, I believe as well
Speaker 2: Foo Fighters. I might have mentioned Gil and Dave. I mean,
Speaker 2: it was just an unbelievable year and being at Neil's
Speaker 2: house insane For those who don't know, you know, these
Speaker 2: benefit shows they would occur at Shoreline Amphitheater, South San Francisco,
Speaker 2: but Neil the night before the first show would have
Speaker 2: a party at his ranch, which was way up in
Speaker 2: the mountains, and you would go down this single lane
Speaker 2: road you know, sheer drops to your death on one side,
Speaker 2: and you drive way out there and then that's then
Speaker 2: this is his house and there's you know, there's food
Speaker 2: and drinks, people hanging out. Yeah, And it was a trip.
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a real trip to just take
Speaker 2: in the scene that you know, we had been invited to,
Speaker 2: and we were very thankful for being invited to, but
Speaker 2: it was clearly above our pay grade, right, so we
Speaker 2: were just kind of like trying to be cool, trying
Speaker 2: to not you know, make sure nobody drank too much
Speaker 2: or did anything stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and just kind of take the whole scene
Speaker 1: in and yeah, it was, it was, it was.
Speaker 2: It was pretty phenomenal. It's pretty amazing thing to be
Speaker 2: a part of.
Speaker 1: Having grown up in the Seattle area, Meeting Dave must
Speaker 1: have been pretty crazy, right, Oh. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: I remember when I was in high school driving down
Speaker 2: forty fifth in Wallingford with a friend and for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: Dave Broll was just standing on the corner talking to
Speaker 2: somebody and we were driving past. You know, there was
Speaker 2: no way to get out of the car. We were
Speaker 2: like on the road, you know. But I remember just
Speaker 2: like somebody being, oh shitl the Sape girl and save Brol,
Speaker 2: like why is Dave Brill on the street, you know,
Speaker 2: and you know that kind of I of course had
Speaker 2: to tamp down that level of fandom when I first
Speaker 2: met him, and you know, at this point now, yeah,
Speaker 2: so it's but I think that you know, and since
Speaker 2: you know, over the years we have become acquaintances and.
Speaker 1: Have played some shows together and done some stuff together,
Speaker 1: and he's a wonderful dude.
Speaker 2: But I think that we all start out as fans, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: and you know we're we become fans of people usually
Speaker 2: at a very formative important time in our lives where music,
Speaker 2: at least for me and I'm sure for you, music
Speaker 2: becomes everything to us. It's like everything we want to do,
Speaker 2: it's everything we want to talk about, it's everything we
Speaker 2: want to be. And those artists that are so formative
Speaker 2: to us, you know, in our teenage years especially, you know,
Speaker 2: certainly in a pre internet, pre social media world, we
Speaker 2: could really be in awe of people and just and
Speaker 2: be in awe of them for their talents and the
Speaker 2: work that they have done and not know anything else
Speaker 2: about them. Yeah, and you know, whether it's things are
Speaker 2: better or worse now depends on I guess how old
Speaker 2: you are and what your experiences have been. But you know,
Speaker 2: a friend of mine, at some point we were just
Speaker 2: kind of goofing off about a bunch of shit, and
Speaker 2: he was he's, you know, about ten years older than me,
Speaker 2: so he was playing in bands around Seattle when Nirvana
Speaker 2: was coming up, right, and you know, we were both
Speaker 2: fans of Nirvana, of course, but he had said something
Speaker 2: along the lines of, you know, I think people forget that, like,
Speaker 2: there were a lot of people in Seattle when Nirvana
Speaker 2: got big that were kind of more like those glu sniffers,
Speaker 2: those fucking guys.
Speaker 1: Those guys.
Speaker 2: No, not those guys, right, I mean there were haters, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, like, you know, people were hating on Nirvana
Speaker 2: or Pearl Jam or whatever it might have been when
Speaker 2: they got popular, right, But as a teenager, you know,
Speaker 2: and as a kid who's growing up on the other
Speaker 2: side of the water from Seattle, I was able to
Speaker 2: just be in awe of them and have no context
Speaker 2: of like, I'm not in a band that's also trying
Speaker 2: to make it at the same time as Nirvana.
Speaker 6: I'm not.
Speaker 2: I'm not an older person who like whose band kind
Speaker 2: of petered out, and I see these young kids coming
Speaker 2: along and they get famous, and I'm jealous. I'm just
Speaker 2: in the perfect place to be in Ah to be
Speaker 2: a fan and to be in awe, you know. And
Speaker 2: I think that's such an important part of being a
Speaker 2: fan of music is to have that period and try
Speaker 2: to hold onto as long as you can.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where you can just be a fan of people and.
Speaker 2: Then also final point on it at forty six. Now
Speaker 2: there are people that I grew up being in awe
Speaker 2: of that are in bands that were so formative for
Speaker 2: me that now I'm might be acquaintances with, might be
Speaker 2: friends with. But I always let them know that I'm
Speaker 2: a huge fan. You know, I'm still asking them questions
Speaker 2: about that one record they made thirty years ago, like
Speaker 2: when you so you know, I know you guys recorded
Speaker 2: it here, but like what was the hand, what kind
Speaker 2: of what was the mic on the thing? And you
Speaker 2: know what kind of guitar did it? And you know,
Speaker 2: I think that I'm proud of still being a fan
Speaker 2: of stuff. You know, I still want to look at
Speaker 2: my favorite bands and my favorite records with wonder and
Speaker 2: have them hold some air of mystery. And if I
Speaker 2: have the ability to discuss the record or the songs
Speaker 2: with the people who made them, like I want them
Speaker 2: to know how much those things mean to me.
Speaker 1: Do you mind playing a few songs from the Translanticism? Yeah?
Speaker 5: Of course.
Speaker 2: What would you like to hear?
Speaker 1: Oh man? I get to pick? How about how about title?
Speaker 1: And registration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's do that one. Yeah, that one.
Speaker 7: That one works well like in this format, glove compartment.
Speaker 3: Is an accurately name.
Speaker 5: Everybody, How is it? I'm proposing the swift, orderly chasege
Speaker 5: behind its door, and there's nothing to keep my fingers warm.
Speaker 5: All I fine souveneers from better silence before probably of.
Speaker 3: Your tail lights fading, eat to fire.
Speaker 5: Yourself a better light. I was searching for some legal talk.
Speaker 5: Man is the rainbeat down on the hoard when I
Speaker 5: stumbled upon picture as I tried to fucket.
Speaker 3: And that's how this idea.
Speaker 5: Is drilled into my head. It's too imports and stay
Speaker 5: in the away spend.
Speaker 3: There's no blame. How I huf did slowly fain. Now
Speaker 3: that it's stong, it's like.
Speaker 5: It was in there at all here, I les disappointment
Speaker 5: and regret. Could I.
Speaker 3: Why away? He can n There's no blame. How I
Speaker 3: love did slowly faith. Now that it's gone, it's like
Speaker 3: it was in fair at all here.
Speaker 5: I rest disappointment and regret, cl.
Speaker 3: Lying away and night.
Speaker 1: All night.
Speaker 3: When I'm lying away to night.
Speaker 1: That was Ben Gibberd performing Death Cab for cutis title
Speaker 1: and registration. We're gonna take a quick break and then
Speaker 1: come back with more of my conversation with Ben Gibbard.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from my interview with Ben Gibbard.
Speaker 1: We pick up our conversation talking about albums that were
Speaker 1: foundational for him. What are some of those records for
Speaker 1: you that are just like touchstones.
Speaker 2: You know, for me when I was in high school
Speaker 2: kind of finding music that would be kind of became
Speaker 2: my music. It was something Vicious for Tomorrow, which was
Speaker 2: treat People. For those who might not know as a
Speaker 2: band that it was Doug Marsh, who now is known
Speaker 2: mostly for Built a Spill. It was a band that
Speaker 2: he was in before Built a Spill, or when he
Speaker 2: was doing kind of the early Built a Spill recordings,
Speaker 2: And that record made a huge impact on me because,
Speaker 2: you know, growing up in like the suburbs of Seattle,
Speaker 2: or I guess across the water from Seattle, I was
Speaker 2: of an age where everybody was starting to get into
Speaker 2: punk and hardcore and stray edge and stuff like that,
Speaker 2: and there were elements of that music that appealed to me,
Speaker 2: but I'd always been a lot more moved by pop
Speaker 2: music and melodic music, and so for me, hearing Something
Speaker 2: Vicious for Tomorrow. That was a record that was this
Speaker 2: kind of beautiful melding of like very aggressive, kind of
Speaker 2: an interesting guitar work, but was just really great pop
Speaker 2: songs like super Chunk was another huge band for me.
Speaker 2: I mean, records like on the Mouth and Foolish, huge
Speaker 2: records for me. There was a lot going on in
Speaker 2: the Northwest at that point that I really you know,
Speaker 2: Treat People was from Boise, but like you know, there
Speaker 2: was a band called Hazel from Portland that it was
Speaker 2: really I loved. There was a band called Pond from
Speaker 2: Portland that I really loved, and I found myself gravitating
Speaker 2: towards a lot of this music from the americanunderground that
Speaker 2: you know, I guess indie rock was the term was
Speaker 2: being used to a certain extent in the early nineties,
Speaker 2: but it was really just kind of like underground American
Speaker 2: music being made by people who came up on hardcore
Speaker 2: but that had abandoned it or had decided, like, you
Speaker 2: know what, I want to make something a little bit
Speaker 2: more dynamic, or something a little bit more has a
Speaker 2: little bit more.
Speaker 1: To say, or whatever.
Speaker 2: And so that was a lot of that music was
Speaker 2: the kind of music that was really formative to me
Speaker 2: in high school because it when you're a young person,
Speaker 2: and again coming back to it, insecure, you know, you
Speaker 2: feel you want to like cool things. You like what
Speaker 2: you like, but you also want those things to be cool, right,
Speaker 2: And I really did genuinely love these records, but it
Speaker 2: also kind of filled a place in my mind where
Speaker 2: I could be like, oh, and also it's kind of punk,
Speaker 2: so you know, but also, I mean, Teenage fan Club
Speaker 2: is my favorite band than when I first heard Bandwagon
Speaker 2: Esque when I was fifteen. You know, I was not
Speaker 2: I had not heard much of the source material or
Speaker 2: influence of that band. I hadn't heard Big Star or
Speaker 2: much from the Birds or any of the kind of
Speaker 2: seventies power pop stuff they were pulling from. But that
Speaker 2: record just felt so familiar to me, and it felt
Speaker 2: like it was this wonderful kind of extension of the
Speaker 2: music that was on in the house when I was
Speaker 2: a kid. But it was kind of like filtered through
Speaker 2: kind of a J Mascus, you know, influence of kind
Speaker 2: of just like really kind of dirty guitars, and I
Speaker 2: wouldn't music was not aggressive by any such the imagination,
Speaker 2: but it had like I had a grit to it
Speaker 2: that I, as a teenager, really appealed to me.
Speaker 1: It's funny that, like I guess with all those bands
Speaker 1: happening there, Grunge, right, Nirvana, mud Honey, like all those
Speaker 1: all those groups, and it's like coming of age in
Speaker 1: San Francisco on like sixty seven or something. So I
Speaker 1: kind of shocked that you were kind of did, though,
Speaker 1: gravitate more towards a softer, more pop sound. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's evident obviously, and I think if you listen to
Speaker 1: Death Cab records that you write pop songs. But it's
Speaker 1: just it's interesting that you gravitated more towards a softer,
Speaker 1: less aggressive sound, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I and to be clear, I loved all
Speaker 2: that stuff too. Like the first real show I ever
Speaker 2: saw was the Subpop Ultra Lanfest in ninety one or
Speaker 2: ninety two, like the mud Honey was headlining, and it
Speaker 2: was like Supersuckers and Seaweed I Love Still Love Seaweed,
Speaker 2: Love Seaweed Earth Pond played, so I mean I was
Speaker 2: definitely into that music as well. And it wasn't as
Speaker 2: if I thought that Nirvana or Soundgarden or Pearl Jam
Speaker 2: or Allison Chains were like, not cool. You know, I
Speaker 2: love those bands too, But I think what I found
Speaker 2: really appealing was that I could go to shows in
Speaker 2: Seattle at this small all ages venue called the Okay Hotel,
Speaker 2: which at the time in Seattle, there was this law
Speaker 2: in the books called the teen Dan's Ordnance, which basically
Speaker 2: legislated that any venue over I believe two hundred to
Speaker 2: two undred fifty capacity needed to have a million dollar
Speaker 2: insurance policy. So that basically meant if you wanted to
Speaker 2: see an all ages show in Seattle is either going
Speaker 2: to be at a very small place, or it was
Speaker 2: going to be at the arena those are the two
Speaker 2: or a theater, right, So so many bands came through
Speaker 2: and would play clubs because we as miners, were not
Speaker 2: allowed in there.
Speaker 1: So I spent so much of my time.
Speaker 2: As a kid going to the Okay Hotel to see
Speaker 2: a lot of these bands that you know I've been
Speaker 2: talking about, And what made a huge impression on me
Speaker 2: was that you'd see them set their gear up on stage,
Speaker 2: then play the show, then break the gear down, then
Speaker 2: go to the merch table and sell their records and
Speaker 2: T shirts, and then you'd see them get load the
Speaker 2: gear into the van and drive away. And it might
Speaker 2: sound a little trite to have to consider that a
Speaker 2: you know, a mind blowing thing to see. But I'm
Speaker 2: a product of the eighties and MTV, and if you
Speaker 2: didn't live in a big city or you didn't have
Speaker 2: access to a college radio station, I legitimately thought when
Speaker 2: I was twelve or thirteen years old that the only
Speaker 2: way to be in a band would be if you
Speaker 2: could play like ripping guitar solos and look like you
Speaker 2: were in slaughter or something, right. I mean that was
Speaker 2: because that was what was on TV.
Speaker 3: You're just seeing it.
Speaker 1: You're like, Okay, well I don't look like that.
Speaker 2: I don't play like that. I'll never play like that.
Speaker 2: I don't actually like this music. I guess I can't
Speaker 2: do it because if I can't do it like that,
Speaker 2: it can't be done. But then you have this experience
Speaker 2: where you see people doing it themselves, real people, real people,
Speaker 2: and they just they're they're not they're not changing into
Speaker 2: a costume to go on stage. They're wearing like jeans
Speaker 2: and a T shirt at the time, probably a flannel
Speaker 2: or a thrift store kind of shirt or whatever. And
Speaker 2: what seemed entirely unobtainable immediately snaps into focus. Is something
Speaker 2: that is like, yeah, I could do that, I could
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 1: That could be me. Do you ever do postal service
Speaker 1: songs in your solo shows?
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, all the time.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah yeah. I mean you wrote the words and
Speaker 1: you wrote to the track, but because you didn't like
Speaker 1: craft the track and you weren't like you didn't write
Speaker 1: the chords or anything. I mean, is it was it
Speaker 1: weird when you first transposed it from the record to
Speaker 1: like a guitar to do a solo.
Speaker 2: You know, some of them work better than others, but
Speaker 2: you know, at the end of the day, there's no
Speaker 2: way to say this sounding self aggrandizing, So forgive me.
Speaker 2: But if you think you've written a good to a
Speaker 2: great song or whatever, if you can play it on
Speaker 2: a piano or a guitar or a single instrument with
Speaker 2: a voice can still kind of convey that kind of
Speaker 2: emotion and power, then you know you might really have something.
Speaker 2: But that's also a function of maybe how records.
Speaker 1: Were made in the past and not so much how
Speaker 1: records are made today. I mean, there or it's a
Speaker 1: song that there's less good songs today.
Speaker 3: I mean you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I you know, I'm not I'm not gonna be the
Speaker 2: one to say that, but I do think that the
Speaker 2: tool box that young people are using to make music
Speaker 2: today maybe does not lend itself as often to picking
Speaker 2: up an acoustic guitar and playing a song that has
Speaker 2: been created in this kind of in a computer with
Speaker 2: a lot of interesting kind of tricks and not tricks,
Speaker 2: but just production techniques that are don't lend themselves well
Speaker 2: to playing a song on acoustic guitar, like you know,
Speaker 2: like there's a band called hunter Gets that I think
Speaker 2: is fucking fascinating. I think they're really interesting, and I
Speaker 2: like a lot of their songs, but not many of
Speaker 2: their songs. And you know this isn't then as a slight.
Speaker 2: Not many of their songs that I've heard feel like
Speaker 2: they could be. You know, I'm not expecting that, you know,
Speaker 2: an acoustic set coming from that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's not I mean, I guess when I
Speaker 1: say there's no good songs, and it's not that the
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily that the music's bad. I think there's
Speaker 1: plenty of great music now, but I think even some
Speaker 1: of the great a lot of the great music I hear,
Speaker 1: they're not great songs, and I don't I think that's fine.
Speaker 1: It's just just kind of is what it is. Just
Speaker 1: like how a lot of the great music I hear
Speaker 1: now doesn't have like a guitar solo. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just I don't know. It means almost like just like
Speaker 1: a fact. It's like, well, this isn't a song, but
Speaker 1: it's great. I love it. You know, it's cool.
Speaker 2: And I think also what constitutes the song has changed
Speaker 2: dramatically since over the years, right, and again I'm doing
Speaker 2: my best not sound like back in my day, men,
Speaker 2: but you know, yeah, no, not all it's it's it's
Speaker 2: really interesting that, you know a lot of songs that
Speaker 2: are very popular these days are like under two minutes long. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and they might just be like a verse and a
Speaker 2: chorus and maybe a verse and maybe another chorus and
Speaker 2: then we're done.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then on the other you have like good vibrations, right,
Speaker 2: or something that's just like unbelievably sophisticated and complicated with
Speaker 2: multiple changes. I mean recently we were on tour and
Speaker 2: I picked up a copy of Seeds of Love by
Speaker 2: Tears for Fears, and which is you know, i'd love
Speaker 2: Tears for Fears, love that record, but you put on
Speaker 2: you know, Sewing the Seeds of Love and you're like,
Speaker 2: holy shit, this is a fucking complicated song man. There's
Speaker 2: like bridges after bridges, key changes, modulations. I mean, it
Speaker 2: is it's they They spared no expense on that one,
Speaker 2: Yeah right, I mean, but a good song is a
Speaker 2: good song if it's you know, a great song is
Speaker 2: a minute long that just punches you right in the face,
Speaker 2: and then a great song can be twenty minute song cycle.
Speaker 2: You know, it's really just a matter of conveying emotion
Speaker 2: and telling a story, you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you have a different relationship to the Postal Service song?
Speaker 1: So they feel holy like yourself? Like I know, like
Speaker 1: in Death Cab youoreus and you felt very much like
Speaker 1: the songwriter, And so I imagine those feel like like
Speaker 1: the way genre Paul George, who like their their Beatles
Speaker 1: songs like those are their songs, But like you feel
Speaker 1: that way about the Postal Server songs? Do those feel different?
Speaker 2: They are, you know, legally and spiritually both Jimmy and
Speaker 2: My and my songs. But I've been playing some of
Speaker 2: them for so long, I've played a lot of these
Speaker 2: songs more on acoustic guitar than I have with Jimmy,
Speaker 2: So a lot of the a lot of the versions
Speaker 2: of these songs have become they've taken on a life
Speaker 2: of their own in this kind of stripped down format.
Speaker 2: I think at some point in the No Direction Home,
Speaker 2: I think the Bob Dylan documentary, he says something along
Speaker 2: the lines of, you know, yeah, the best versions of
Speaker 2: my songs were never recorded. Yeah, you know, you go
Speaker 2: into a studio and you make a you know, you
Speaker 2: record like a rolling stone, and you know, that's just
Speaker 2: like he probably wrote that the week before, and they
Speaker 2: went in with a guy who had never played orgon
Speaker 2: on a record before, right, and they just and they
Speaker 2: knock it out in a couple of takes, and like,
Speaker 2: all right, that is the definitive version of like a
Speaker 2: you know, like a rolling stone. That's what it is,
Speaker 2: from from now until the end of time. But as
Speaker 2: a performer, as a touring musician, as pertains to our songs,
Speaker 2: I'm sure Dylan probably feels the same way, because he
Speaker 2: literally said it. We've gotten a lot better at playing
Speaker 2: all of these songs because we've played them hundreds, if
Speaker 2: not thousands of times, and there's little kind of variations
Speaker 2: and little tweaks of kind of kind of like bubbled
Speaker 2: up over the years, you know. So I'm very much
Speaker 2: a firm believer in that notion. Yeah, the best versions
Speaker 2: of anything I've ever recorded has not been recorded.
Speaker 1: I like that. It's like, you know, the best.
Speaker 2: Version of an acoustic pulsiver song probably existed somewhere in
Speaker 2: a solo show somewhere in the world. And maybe, you know,
Speaker 2: these days everything seems to be recorded in some capacity,
Speaker 2: but maybe it maybe it happened in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: right before the iPhone came out or something, you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or maybe it's one could be.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I mean I think when we heard
Speaker 2: when we heard Ironwiness versions that's chrit Heights were kind
Speaker 2: of like, well, I guess that's how I'm playing that now,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just like there's that uh.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you might be too young to
Speaker 2: remember this bit, but there was like an old SNL
Speaker 2: bit with Eddie Murphy playing buck Wheat and he's like
Speaker 2: singing all these songs and the whole thing is like
Speaker 2: Buckwheat has a record of him doing standards, you know,
Speaker 2: and at some point the announcer says something along lines
Speaker 2: of like, you know, when Buck Wheat sings a song,
Speaker 2: it's eternally his, you know, And I feel that way
Speaker 2: about Sam Beam. You know, when Sam Beam decides to
Speaker 2: sing a song, it kind of becomes eternally his. It's like, now,
Speaker 2: such great heights, you know, belongs to Sam Beam, at
Speaker 2: least spiritually.
Speaker 1: At this point, it's a really good version, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's so good, really good version that era of music.
Speaker 1: I felt special having heard the Postal Service Record in what,
Speaker 1: in my mind what I considered early and then by
Speaker 1: the time that record starts blowing up, he started to
Speaker 1: feel like, well, like, but this was this was my music,
Speaker 1: This was my group. You know. There was because I
Speaker 1: think in that time and a little later, people were
Speaker 1: starving for like kind of real people that could connect to.
Speaker 1: There was also this sense of like you wanted to
Speaker 1: keep things small and for yourself, and sometimes that that
Speaker 1: could be I guess, you know, in hindsight, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that was limiting both the fans and the artists. But
Speaker 1: was it weird for you when when the Postal Service
Speaker 1: Record took off the way that it did.
Speaker 2: Oh, of course absolutely. I mean, do you feel like
Speaker 2: I can speak from experience because you know, I was
Speaker 2: also once a young person getting into music, right. I
Speaker 2: think when you're young, you're kind of figuring, you're finding
Speaker 2: out who you are, You're kind of creating your identity.
Speaker 2: We haven't really done a lot of stuff yet, right,
Speaker 2: So how we define ourselves tends to be through the
Speaker 2: things that we like. So if you like something super obscure,
Speaker 2: that telegraphs to somebody that you are a very interesting
Speaker 2: person because I'm the only one who likes this really
Speaker 2: obscure thing that not a lot of people know about.
Speaker 2: But then when the captain of the football team is
Speaker 2: like singing Nirvana songs, suddenly, suddenly, you know, the definition
Speaker 2: of your individuality through being a Nirvana fan doesn't seem
Speaker 2: that unique anymore.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: As I've gotten older, I've been really able to parse
Speaker 2: it out for myself, and it's been interesting to see
Speaker 2: how that phenomenon kind of works, how it exists in people.
Speaker 1: Right. But you know, never connected though that it was
Speaker 1: related to that we haven't had many experiences. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's obvious to everyone that that's how we define ourselves
Speaker 1: as by the things we're into at that age, but
Speaker 1: I really never connected it to that. It's like, you
Speaker 1: can't define yourself by your job at that age, or
Speaker 1: you have no job.
Speaker 2: You're going to high school and so you know, you
Speaker 2: haven't probably written anything, or built anything, or done anything
Speaker 2: or gone anywhere. So, you know, so much of our identity,
Speaker 2: certainly when we're into the arts or music, tend to
Speaker 2: revolve around the things that we like, and the more
Speaker 2: obscure those things are, the more interesting we are as people.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: But you know, to kind of come back around to
Speaker 2: the response to give up when I believe when subpop
Speaker 2: was kind of making its calculations as to how many records,
Speaker 2: you know, the projections on what we thought this thing
Speaker 2: could sell or what they thought it could sell. I
Speaker 2: think at that point Death Caab's biggest record had sold
Speaker 2: fifty thousand copies or something like that would have been
Speaker 2: the photo album, and you know, Jimmy's Records had done
Speaker 2: what they had done. I don't know what they had done,
Speaker 2: and I think they had determined, you know, between will
Speaker 2: be in really great shape if we sell between like
Speaker 2: fifteen and twenty thousand copies, because that's like slightly less
Speaker 2: than half the Death Cab record, and you know, this
Speaker 2: seems like this might be a good, good kind of goal.
Speaker 2: And you know, we went out in the spring of
Speaker 2: two thousand and three and did a five week tour
Speaker 2: of the States, playing to you know, not many people.
Speaker 2: You know, when we get to New York, we were
Speaker 2: playing one Bowery Baller and then now we're playing two.
Speaker 1: That's exciting.
Speaker 2: And the La Show got moved from I think the
Speaker 2: Smell and then it eventually ended up at the Palace
Speaker 2: Theater on Vine. So you know, by the time the
Speaker 2: tours end, things were starting to pick up and it
Speaker 2: felt like the record was starting to have legs, but
Speaker 2: there was no kind of sense that it would kind
Speaker 2: of take off the way that it did. And what
Speaker 2: is still so interesting to me about that record is that,
Speaker 2: you know, subpop was trying to promote it, but they weren't.
Speaker 2: You know, it wasn't getting played on the radio. It
Speaker 2: was we didn't have like a video and rotation on MTV.
Speaker 2: It was kind of like the record was kind of
Speaker 2: selling itself.
Speaker 1: What was the promotional effort around that because I don't
Speaker 1: really remember one until I guess the video gets made
Speaker 1: in that video was made a couple of years later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know it was. It kind of
Speaker 2: got sent through the pretty standard sub Pop promotional machine,
Speaker 2: which was, you know, we'll get our publicist on trying
Speaker 2: to get interviews and try to get college rated to
Speaker 2: play it for a couple of months, and then we'll
Speaker 2: move on to whatever the next record is. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it really became The record just took on a life
Speaker 2: of its own to the extent where Jimmy and I
Speaker 2: might be the authors of the record and Subpop might
Speaker 2: have been the label, but it just kind of it
Speaker 2: just had this incredibly organic word of mouth vibe to
Speaker 2: it where I don't want to like undersell the work
Speaker 2: that Subpop did on Our Behalf. But it wasn't as
Speaker 2: if sub Pop was spending a ton of money to
Speaker 2: let people know the record exist.
Speaker 1: For thinking it was going to be the next Death
Speaker 1: Cab record, right, which is probably why they assumed less
Speaker 1: than the fifty thousand that photo album. Right.
Speaker 2: It's like yeah, I just like, yeah, it'll be Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, people will be interested in this if they're
Speaker 2: fans of Death Cab. But it's when a singer from
Speaker 2: a band puts out a solo record, like nobody expects
Speaker 2: the solo record to be you know, Dave Girl puts
Speaker 2: out a solo record, nobody's expecting it to do as
Speaker 2: well as a food fine record. Yeah right, so yeah,
Speaker 2: so we just kind of and we kind of we
Speaker 2: wrapped up that tour whom we kind of thought, well,
Speaker 2: that's that, that was fun, and then we just get
Speaker 2: these calls from Tony at Subpop like, hey, the record
Speaker 2: is sold fifty thousand copies. Hey, the record's eighty thousand copies. Guys,
Speaker 2: we just want over one hundred thousand copies. We're two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand copies. It just it just snowballed. And to
Speaker 2: this day, I don't I don't have I don't have
Speaker 2: a good explanations to why that happened, aside from the fact.
Speaker 1: That we obviously thought the record was good, was really good.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of great music in the world
Speaker 2: that doesn't sell a knowing copy efctionally good.
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's kind of what I was trying
Speaker 1: to get at the top, is like people had made
Speaker 1: of course people, I mean, there's nine inch Nails, right, Like,
Speaker 1: he's right, he's a songwriter and he does it in
Speaker 1: the kind of an electronic idiom and there's a human
Speaker 1: league to all that. But it's like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's so into this day. It doesn't sound the record
Speaker 1: doesn't sound dated, and there's like radio ad records that
Speaker 1: sound dated to me at this point, you know, and
Speaker 1: you listen to that, you're like, oh my god, Like
Speaker 1: it's still there's something about it that is exceptionally well crafted.
Speaker 1: And same with Translanticism too, which I revisited recently, and
Speaker 1: I think it has to do with the songwriting and
Speaker 1: the production both.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. I mean, I have
Speaker 2: had exceptional timing in my career and I don't know
Speaker 2: who to thank for that. You know, I think that
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's been said a million times that
Speaker 2: if you could kind of if you could manufacture.
Speaker 1: A hit, that's all we would have, right, Yeah, But
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I feel like, certainly myself in relation to both Translanticism
Speaker 2: and give Up, I feel confident in my abilities as
Speaker 2: a songwriter. I feel confident and proud of my collaborators,
Speaker 2: and I think the things we.
Speaker 1: Made were really good.
Speaker 2: But you know, there were a lot of records coming
Speaker 2: out in that same timeframe, you know, that were as good,
Speaker 2: if not better. And you know, I'm not saying this
Speaker 2: to be overly self effacing. I'm just saying like, we
Speaker 2: just found ourselves making. We had these two records come
Speaker 2: out that, for whatever series of reasons, really hit in
Speaker 2: the culture, and we were there and able to capitalize
Speaker 2: on it and be out on tour and be promoting
Speaker 2: the records.
Speaker 1: And you know, what was also.
Speaker 2: Happening at that time was this massive cultural shift where
Speaker 2: indie rock went from being this underground medium to being
Speaker 2: I wouldn't I would never say so much mainstream, but
Speaker 2: certainly like larger than it had ever been, you know,
Speaker 2: and certainly kind of started to kind of like you know,
Speaker 2: it was stre sure, Yeah, and in a similar way
Speaker 2: that you know, quote unquote alternative broken in the mainstream
Speaker 2: post Nirvana, where there are bands that bands are playing
Speaker 2: theaters that a couple of years ago were just playing clubs, right,
Speaker 2: So I think that we were also. Both records were
Speaker 2: kind of spurred on by this larger kind of cultural shift,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean there's that famous Sonic Youth documentary
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one, the year the Punk Broke, which was
Speaker 2: a very apt title in hindsight, and I feel like
Speaker 2: a similar piece could be made about two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: and that like two thousand and four was the year
Speaker 2: that indie rock broke, Like it went from being this
Speaker 2: underground thing to like a year or two later, it's like.
Speaker 1: The Killers are everywhere or whatever an Arcade.
Speaker 2: Fire, Yeah, ArKade Fire, and the Shins and and you know,
Speaker 2: it's like bands that if they had come out five
Speaker 2: years earlier would have been playing basements and small clubs
Speaker 2: are now headlining Lollapalooza.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, really crazy, really insane time. What did
Speaker 1: the guys from Death Cab What was their reaction to
Speaker 1: both the music of the service and also the success
Speaker 1: of Give Up? Was it tough?
Speaker 2: Everyone was very supportive while I was making the record,
Speaker 2: And you know, Chris actually plays plays some piano and
Speaker 2: on the record on Give Up. Chris played piano on
Speaker 2: the song nothing Better, and he helped record some of
Speaker 2: the guitars and vocals and stuff. So he was kind
Speaker 2: of helping me make make some of the record. I
Speaker 2: did some of it at my little home studio, but
Speaker 2: Chris was integral and.
Speaker 1: Helping make the record.
Speaker 2: And you know, Death Cab had come off a pretty
Speaker 2: grueling period of touring between We Have the Facts and
Speaker 2: Revoting Yes and Photo Album, and it was a real
Speaker 2: grind and we had, you know, almost broken up, and
Speaker 2: thankfully kind of pulled back from the edge of the
Speaker 2: cliff and said, like, we need to take some time off,
Speaker 2: like we need we need to take some time away
Speaker 2: from this. It was that time away, which ended up
Speaker 2: being eight or nine months, that allowed me to really
Speaker 2: kind of wander creatively and write songs for both Translanticism
Speaker 2: and do this project with Jimmy. So everybody in the
Speaker 2: band was really supportive of it, and when it came out,
Speaker 2: you know, everybody was cool with it. I think there
Speaker 2: was a very awkward period between when give Up eclipsed
Speaker 2: the sales of the photo album and when transit Lanticism
Speaker 2: came out.
Speaker 1: You know, I started Death Caap for Cutie. This was
Speaker 1: my band.
Speaker 2: It started as a solo project, so you know, I
Speaker 2: didn't think that anybody in the band needed reassurance that
Speaker 2: I wasn't going to like jump ship to this new
Speaker 2: thing that because it was starting to blow up. I mean,
Speaker 2: that never crossed my mind, but you know, there was
Speaker 2: a little bit of awkwardness when all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm sitting on a side project that has
Speaker 2: sold two hundred and fifty thousand copies or whatever, and
Speaker 2: you know, we're just about to put transit Lantism out,
Speaker 2: and there's this kind of like and it wasn't happening
Speaker 2: a lot, but it was starting to happen a little
Speaker 2: bit where people would come to our shows and they'd
Speaker 2: be screaming for pols over songs. They didn't understand the distinction.
Speaker 2: They didn't get that we weren't just going to go
Speaker 2: into a service song. Yeah, And so you know, there
Speaker 2: was a period of time in which I think some
Speaker 2: of you know, there was some bruised egos in the
Speaker 2: band around understandably.
Speaker 1: I mean that understandably of course.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's like we as Death Cab
Speaker 2: had joked about selling fifty thousand records being indie rock gold,
Speaker 2: right like, we we were a huge band in quotes
Speaker 2: like and we were as big as you could be,
Speaker 2: you know, and then to find out that not only
Speaker 2: was there another level, but then I was experiencing that
Speaker 2: other level with my side project. You know, there was
Speaker 2: some awkward moments there. But back to timing. You know,
Speaker 2: if we would have put out photo album in two
Speaker 2: thousand and three instead of Translanticism, Death Cab would not
Speaker 2: have become what it became, right, and the profile of
Speaker 2: the band would not have risen the way it did
Speaker 2: after Translentism came out. So we just were very fortunate
Speaker 2: to be putting out you know what, I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people would consider to this day our best
Speaker 2: record as the as a follow up of sorts to
Speaker 2: give up.
Speaker 1: Earlier, you were talking about how like before you work
Speaker 1: a verse in a way to like faster songs like
Speaker 1: the kind of slow malaise kind of would become known
Speaker 1: as kind of like a shoegayzy thing maybe, But you know, Translanticism,
Speaker 1: I don't know how much of that is down to
Speaker 1: also getting a new drummer around that time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: feel like added a lot to that record. Was one
Speaker 1: feeding the other in a way in terms of just
Speaker 1: the production. Do you think I'm not?
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say that.
Speaker 2: You know, there might be some similarities in the some
Speaker 2: slight similarities just because of my voice and how I
Speaker 2: kind of stack vocals and stuff like that, But Chris
Speaker 2: was very much doing his own thing with translanticism, and
Speaker 2: you know, the give up was like a Jimmy.
Speaker 1: And Ben production.
Speaker 2: So we were just kind of doing it ourselves, having
Speaker 2: never really produced a record before, just kind of flying
Speaker 2: by the seat of my pants.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think when when Jason joined the band,
Speaker 2: I think we all we had tried to get Jason
Speaker 2: to join the band, I believe two previous times. Our
Speaker 2: first drummer, Nathan Good, who is a phenomenal drummer. And
Speaker 2: you know, when we first started the band and had
Speaker 2: Nathan playing drums, I was convinced that I'd never like
Speaker 2: this was it was like your first love, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like this guy plays, he hits so hard and the
Speaker 2: partsy rights are so cool, and like, ah, this guy's great.
Speaker 2: But you know, we just found ourselves in a position
Speaker 2: where we were driving around playing to nobody, making no money,
Speaker 2: and he was just out of college, and you know,
Speaker 2: he's wanted to get married and kind of get a job.
Speaker 2: And I think there might have been a little familial
Speaker 2: pressure there as well, because I mean, look at us,
Speaker 2: with these four idiots in a van driving around stinky,
Speaker 2: you know, making no money. Why would there be a
Speaker 2: future in that and I can see that now, you
Speaker 2: know as an adult. You know, if you were outside
Speaker 2: of this culture, you wouldn't see that and go like, no,
Speaker 2: that's a that's a dead end, buddy.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when Nathan quit, we had this gentleman named Michael
Speaker 2: Shore joined the band, and he was a phenomenal drummer,
Speaker 2: great drummer, great dude. But him, he and Chris really
Speaker 2: kind of butted heads in the studio. They didn't play
Speaker 2: well together in that in that capacity. So when Jason
Speaker 2: joined the band really felt like we you know, and
Speaker 2: this might I don't mean this as a slight to
Speaker 2: Michael or Nathan, but it really felt like we really,
Speaker 2: we really had somebody that was like on board all
Speaker 2: the way.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And for me, as someone who fancies himself at least
Speaker 2: a little bit of a drummer, I was writing a
Speaker 2: lot of parts, a lot of drum parts, especially in
Speaker 2: the early records, and you know, Jason is one of
Speaker 2: the greatest drummers I've ever heard. But he also would
Speaker 2: have no issue with, oh, yeah, that is that how
Speaker 2: you want the drums? Okay, cool, I'll play like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: But he'd also be like, but I could also do
Speaker 2: it like this and he's like, oh, that's cool, or
Speaker 2: like no, I think I like it like this, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll do it like that. So he was very malleable
Speaker 2: and he was very opinionated, but without ever being overbearing,
Speaker 2: Like you know, when Jason had a strong Jason wouldn't
Speaker 2: just Jason's not the kind of guy who will just
Speaker 2: chime in with every opinion that he has, but if
Speaker 2: you feel strongly about something, he will voice that opinion.
Speaker 2: And for the first time in a long time, I
Speaker 2: would see when he was pushing back on something that
Speaker 2: Chris was trying to have him do. I would see
Speaker 2: Chris really focusing and really listening to Jason and be like, Okay,
Speaker 2: let's do it that way. And that was that was
Speaker 2: a new experience for us. Wow, primarily because Michael.
Speaker 1: And Chris had but it had so much there.
Speaker 2: There's so much adversarial kind of moments in the studio
Speaker 2: that it was difficult to parse out who was being unreasonable.
Speaker 2: It was just they weren't They just weren't agreeing. So
Speaker 2: once we had Jason, it was like there was no audition.
Speaker 2: We were just like, all right, let's let's just get
Speaker 2: in and start working on these songs.
Speaker 1: You had the demos for the Translanticism, saw some of
Speaker 1: them at least before Yeah, before yeah, okay, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: We just immediately jumped in the studio and started experimenting
Speaker 2: and playing around with the songs, and in this case
Speaker 2: with a drummer who was more than willing to like
Speaker 2: you know, Neil Pert all over the song or to
Speaker 2: just sit out and not play at all.
Speaker 1: There was you know he did.
Speaker 2: He didn't have any ego about his I mean, we
Speaker 2: all have an ego about our playing, but he had
Speaker 2: very very little ego about his playing in relation to
Speaker 2: what it did in the song. He just wanted the
Speaker 2: songs to shine. And it's not to say that Nathan
Speaker 2: nor Michael didn't want that either, but I think that
Speaker 2: McGirr was very He was very very confident in who
Speaker 2: he was and his abilities and felt comfortable saying like,
Speaker 2: all right, cool, I'll sit out in this one, yeah,
Speaker 2: or get behind the kit.
Speaker 1: Show me what you want me to play. He was
Speaker 1: very cool with it. And it feels like as much
Speaker 1: as this, like you were hitting your stride as a
Speaker 1: songwriter at that point, and maybe Chris was hitting his
Speaker 1: stride as as a producer at that point. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: definitely felt like you two were kind of peeking or
Speaker 1: kind of finally coming into your own at that point
Speaker 1: in your respective boye and then like this new drummer
Speaker 1: comes in with his energy, and it really helped create
Speaker 1: the sound that is Death Cab in a way, you know,
Speaker 1: which is weird to say, because I came into Death
Speaker 1: Cab like photo album smattering of stuff from like we
Speaker 1: have the facts of voting, yes, but like when you
Speaker 1: I remember when I heard Translanticism was like holy shit,
Speaker 1: like you wanted to listen to it. It felt like
Speaker 1: a whole experience from front to back. Same with give Up.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I definitely think that. You know, I've gone
Speaker 2: on record a number of times saying that, well, I
Speaker 2: think there's some great songs on the photo album. It's
Speaker 2: one of my least favorite albums that we've made, primarily
Speaker 2: because of the climate in which.
Speaker 1: We were making it.
Speaker 2: I didn't think we had enough songs, but we had
Speaker 2: to make a record because we had to be on
Speaker 2: the road. We weren't getting along, and you know, Transatlanticism
Speaker 2: and give Up as well, but certainly Translenticism is the
Speaker 2: sound of for people who are all on the same page,
Speaker 2: enjoying each other's company, getting along all with the this
Speaker 2: with the common goal. I'm sure there, of course are wonderful, amazing,
Speaker 2: genre defining records that were made under duress or with
Speaker 2: addicts or people fist fighting in the studio or whatever like.
Speaker 2: But it's been my experience that, at least for me,
Speaker 2: the best stuff that I've ever been involved with has
Speaker 2: been the product of free and easy communication, love and
Speaker 2: respect and the focus on a common goal and translanticism
Speaker 2: and give up for that matter. But again, very much
Speaker 2: translanticism is a product of that. It's a it's a
Speaker 2: record made out of with love and respect we all
Speaker 2: and you know, we would make records. We have made
Speaker 2: records since then that we're not necessarily made under those circumstances.
Speaker 2: But you know, I think it was getting close to
Speaker 2: breaking up and then pulling back and being like, no,
Speaker 2: we all love each other, we really want to do this.
Speaker 1: We're just a bunch of.
Speaker 2: Dipshits in our mid twenties who don't know how to
Speaker 2: communicate with each other. Yeah, let's kind of let's take
Speaker 2: a step back and take some time away and then
Speaker 2: come back at this and you know, do the best
Speaker 2: we can.
Speaker 1: We're going to take one last break and then come
Speaker 1: back with more from Ben Gibberd. Before we hear the
Speaker 1: rest of my conversation with Ben Gibberd, let's hear him
Speaker 1: play Death Cabs Song, Tiny Vessels.
Speaker 3: This is the moment.
Speaker 1: That you know.
Speaker 3: That you told her that you love to butcher Joan.
Speaker 3: You touch her skin and then you think that she's beautiful,
Speaker 3: but she don't need a thing to me. Yes, she
Speaker 3: is beautiful, but she don't need a thing. He I
Speaker 3: spent two weeks in silver late.
Speaker 5: The California son cascading down my face.
Speaker 3: There was a girl.
Speaker 5: Light Brown Street, and she was beautiful, but she didn't
Speaker 5: need a thing to me. Yes, she was beautiful, but
Speaker 5: she didn't need a.
Speaker 3: Thing to me.
Speaker 5: I wanted silverly and all the words that I was
Speaker 5: speaking as we moved to the dark, all the friends
Speaker 5: that I was telling, all the playful, the misspellings, and
Speaker 5: I'm free why I gave it left when signy that
Speaker 5: soul zoos didn't see your neck then formed the bruises
Speaker 5: that you sent you to long to faith.
Speaker 3: Both they did and sigh that day all I see
Speaker 3: dark ring clown in the distance, smoothing closer with every hour.
Speaker 3: So when you that there's something wrong, I think you're
Speaker 3: damn right there is, but we can't talk.
Speaker 5: About it now, and we can't talk about it now.
Speaker 5: So one last time.
Speaker 3: And then you'll go and we'll pretend that it meant
Speaker 3: something so much more. But it was vile and it
Speaker 3: was cheating.
Speaker 5: And you are beautiful, but your tone me to thing me. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you are beautiful, but your tone a thing. Yeah you
Speaker 5: are beautiful, but you tone mean a thing me.
Speaker 1: It's a beautiful song, thank you, And there's a level
Speaker 1: of that songs biographical. You were living in Silver Lake
Speaker 1: at some point during the writing of that record, right.
Speaker 2: The story takes place kind of bringing around to give up.
Speaker 2: I was down in Silver Lake working on the Post
Speaker 2: Service record at Jimmy's house. So I'd been seeing this
Speaker 2: woman for a period of time who I had I
Speaker 2: had been obsessed with for a long time, and we
Speaker 2: were finally dating and we just we just kind of
Speaker 2: weren't good together. It just didn't work. And yet, you know,
Speaker 2: I kind of internalized a lot of the failures of
Speaker 2: the relationship on my inability to see from a very
Speaker 2: early point that we were not compatible because I was
Speaker 2: completely I was what's the word. It was somebody that
Speaker 2: I had been just I had lusted over for so long,
Speaker 2: and then you kind of realize that, like sex with
Speaker 2: beautiful people is a lot of fun, but it's not
Speaker 2: without at least for me. It's certainly at that time
Speaker 2: my life in this particular relationship without a really kind
Speaker 2: of strong connection, it started to feel very empty, and
Speaker 2: I started to feel as if I was in it
Speaker 2: for the wrong reasons. And when the person who's the
Speaker 2: subject of the song first heard it, they were really upset. Understandably,
Speaker 2: what I hope comes through in the song is not
Speaker 2: so much that it's not an indictment of the person
Speaker 2: that I'm singing to. It's an indictment of myself and
Speaker 2: to me. And the real kind of core of the
Speaker 2: song is in the bridge, where it's like I wanted
Speaker 2: to believe in all the words I was speaking. I
Speaker 2: wanted to like, you know, I was over committing. I
Speaker 2: was trying to convince myself that I had stronger feelings
Speaker 2: that this was more than what it was, which was
Speaker 2: just an extension of my desire for this person, physical desire,
Speaker 2: rather than a sense of connection away from that, you know,
Speaker 2: and you know, years later we have we're on very
Speaker 2: good terms.
Speaker 1: We're friends. That's fine.
Speaker 2: I wrote a lot of songs about her. In fact,
Speaker 2: you know, the song Such Great Heights is about her
Speaker 2: as well. Really so yeah, so you know, she she
Speaker 2: kind of she exists throughout these records in a very
Speaker 2: interesting way. Same with Lightness. The song Lightness is about
Speaker 2: her as well. So there's kind of a there's an
Speaker 2: interesting kind of arc between these records about this person,
Speaker 2: where in a song like Lightness, it's this like it's
Speaker 2: the desire, it's the yearning, and then Such Great Heights
Speaker 2: is the culmination of like all the feelings, and then
Speaker 2: Tiny Vessels is the letdown. You know, it's it's the
Speaker 2: realization that, oh I never actually felt this way. I
Speaker 2: just got swept up, you know.
Speaker 1: And twenty years later she feel pretty flattered in a way,
Speaker 1: or be you know, I would feel that way, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, if you go to some.
Speaker 2: I mean we're friend, we're friends now, so it's yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean I think that you know, like any as
Speaker 2: as a lot of things. You know, it's like so funny,
Speaker 2: we were just talking a couple of days ago, and
Speaker 2: we were both commenting about what dipshits we were when
Speaker 2: we were twenty five, you know, really like things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like we're.
Speaker 2: I think I'm a lot better person at forty six.
Speaker 1: Than I was at twenty five. You know, is it
Speaker 1: hard like a song like that now? Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're going to go on a tour. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you'll play that song or not. Hopefully
Speaker 1: you do. It's great. I want to hear it.
Speaker 2: Oh of course, yeah, well we're yeah, we well the
Speaker 2: tour that we're doing in the fall with these records
Speaker 2: were you know, we're playing them start to finish.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize was going to play both start to finish.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's the plan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so yeah, so it starts, it's the show will
Speaker 2: be essensibly like Translentiism, start to finish, short break, give up.
Speaker 1: Start to finish. That's going to be great experience.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's kind of a product of I think these this
Speaker 2: kind of format as a product of a streaming era
Speaker 2: in that I don't remember who was the first one
Speaker 2: to do these shows. I believe it was some promoters
Speaker 2: in England like fifteen years ago that started doing these,
Speaker 2: like invited a band to play their assemble album and
Speaker 2: it's kind of yeah, I've kind of taken off and
Speaker 2: from a you know, you know, a concert goers perspective,
Speaker 2: it's really kind of a nice as to go and pretty.
Speaker 1: Much know what you're gonna get.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I mean, obviously, sometimes you go see
Speaker 2: a band and you're with your friends, like, I hope
Speaker 2: they play that song from the third record. You know,
Speaker 2: we've all done that, right, and sometimes like they played
Speaker 2: everything I wanted them to hear, Like they didn't play
Speaker 2: fucking anything I wanted them to hear. Those guys, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: but in this case, you know, if what you're looking
Speaker 2: for is hearing these records, you will want you will
Speaker 2: hopefully not go home disappointed.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we'll definitely be playing that one. I mean,
Speaker 1: a song like that that's obviously highly personal and you
Speaker 1: it's it's so biographical. Is it hard to access the
Speaker 1: motion of it? Again? Is it? Is it almost too
Speaker 1: easy and you try not to? Or how do you
Speaker 1: perform it in a way that honors the song but
Speaker 1: without almost going back to that place you were twenty
Speaker 1: years ago writing it?
Speaker 2: I guess I wrote I wrote tiny vessels when I
Speaker 2: was twenty six. I think I'm forty six now, so
Speaker 2: it's been twenty years since I wrote the song, and
Speaker 2: you know, there's a part of me that has to
Speaker 2: exist in that headspace for the three or four minutes
Speaker 2: that we're playing that song. But it's not it's not
Speaker 2: the extent of like have you seen Walkhard the Dewey
Speaker 2: Cops story, where it's like, you know, Dewey has to
Speaker 2: you know, he's sitting in a corner by himself and
Speaker 2: somebody's like, don't bother me. He has to relive every
Speaker 2: moment of his life before he goes on stage. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not it's not quite that dramatic. But I do
Speaker 2: find that when I'm performing a song, I do try
Speaker 2: to place myself back in, reconnecting with the imagery that
Speaker 2: made me want to write that song in the first place.
Speaker 2: So it's like, it's as if, you know, it's kind
Speaker 2: of a slightly pretentious thing to call songs like little movies,
Speaker 2: but there is there's a collection of imagery that was
Speaker 2: in my mind when I wrote that song, and I
Speaker 2: find myself accessing that again. I don't place, I don't
Speaker 2: place the narrative in my mind in a contemporary context
Speaker 2: or in my life now, So it can be a
Speaker 2: little bit of a headfuck to it. Certainly with a
Speaker 2: lot of my songs, be kind of reintroducing yourself to
Speaker 2: all of your failings every night. But at the same time,
Speaker 2: I think it's also a really wonderful way to gain
Speaker 2: perspective on where you are in your life today. I
Speaker 2: play a song I wrote when I was twenty, and
Speaker 2: the lyrics are by a twenty year old. That's not
Speaker 2: to say that they're good or bad, but that's just
Speaker 2: who they were written by. And there are very few things, thankfully,
Speaker 2: that resonate in that song that I wrote when I
Speaker 2: was twenty with my forty six year old self. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm an emotionally, hopefully slightly developed person at least since then.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I do find I do place myself in
Speaker 2: the song. I remember who the songs were about. I
Speaker 2: kind of pay I have to the honor them forgiving
Speaker 2: me the song by kind of thinking about them.
Speaker 1: I'm performing them. You know, you mentioned the imagery involved
Speaker 1: with writing songs. The songs, particularly in translanticism, I feel
Speaker 1: are so and it was one of the things that
Speaker 1: struck me from the very first time hearing it. They
Speaker 1: are really visual, Like I mean, just even that theme
Speaker 1: tiny vessels and the and the bruise, and that leaves
Speaker 1: and then it goes. You know, it's like a title registration,
Speaker 1: same thing. And I noticed with title registration though on
Speaker 1: the demo version the lyrics were a little different. The
Speaker 1: album version was much more leaned into the imagery of
Speaker 1: the glove compartment. Going for the documentation. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of beautiful imagery in that record, and I love the
Speaker 1: way that it's it's it's all weave together, all kind
Speaker 1: of wraps up.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the first three records be it
Speaker 2: not by design, but just by default. I think the
Speaker 2: lyrics ended up being a little bit more obtuse and
Speaker 2: a little bit more like Stipeen than, you know, than
Speaker 2: Gibbardian in the sense where I was I was writing
Speaker 2: these I think when you like kind of when I
Speaker 2: call through the lyrics of the first three records, you know,
Speaker 2: there are some songs that are kind of relatively straight narratives.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of songs that are kind of they're
Speaker 2: a little they're more obtuse, a little more impressionistic. And
Speaker 2: I think by the time I was writing stuff for Translanticism,
Speaker 2: I started to really lean into this idea of I
Speaker 2: want people to hear the song one time and be
Speaker 2: able to see it, yeah, to see something rather than like,
Speaker 2: you know, like I was listening to like RIM's Reckoning
Speaker 2: not that long ago, and which is I've been listening
Speaker 2: to for thirty five years or whatever, and I still
Speaker 2: know what the fun he's talking about in a lot
Speaker 2: of these songs, right, you know, And I haven't and
Speaker 2: I've never actually delved into the lyrics and tried to
Speaker 2: decipher them, you know. But then again, you put on
Speaker 2: songs amount of time and you're right there, You're like
Speaker 2: you put on Losing My Religion or Low or any
Speaker 2: of the songs and you're just like, wow, yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I get it. I'm here, like you know, Me and
Speaker 2: Honey a fucking amazing song. And you know, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: say that the lyrics got better for myself or for
Speaker 2: Michael Stipe as much as you know, the obtuseness, the
Speaker 2: abstractness started to kind of become a little bit more
Speaker 2: literal and a little bit more observational. And so I
Speaker 2: guess when I'm writing a song now, or or certainly
Speaker 2: around translanticism. You know, the idea would be you listen
Speaker 2: to it once you understand what the song's about, but
Speaker 2: there are turns of phrase that you go like, well,
Speaker 2: what did you just say?
Speaker 1: That was fucking cool?
Speaker 5: I like that.
Speaker 2: But I think on some of the earlier records there
Speaker 2: are so many kind of obscure turns of phrases that
Speaker 2: in the less effective moments, it's kind of a word salad.
Speaker 1: It's a much more eloquent way of saying what I
Speaker 1: was trying to say. Yeah, there's these.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's like that's but that's kind
Speaker 2: of the idea, right, you want to kind of like
Speaker 2: I the hope is not to tip too far into
Speaker 2: bland writing, you know, where you're just kind of writing
Speaker 2: I'm happy, I'm sad this thing happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So that the goal is to kind of.
Speaker 2: Virtually everything I've written since has been like I want
Speaker 2: people to be able to put it on and they
Speaker 2: hear it once and they get it, but then there's
Speaker 2: things to go back to you.
Speaker 1: And kind of like what did you say there? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I like that, yeah, And you know, sometimes I pull
Speaker 2: it off sometimes I don't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's incredible. I don't want to keep you too long.
Speaker 1: Can we do a post server song?
Speaker 2: And yeah, for sure, Yeah I got I think I
Speaker 2: know which one would be good here, m h.
Speaker 5: I'll be the grapes ferments is bottled and served, the
Speaker 5: table set and my fine is like a perfect chance
Speaker 5: was now. I'll be the fire escape that's bolted to
Speaker 5: the ancient brick.
Speaker 3: Where you will set and contemplate your day. I'll be
Speaker 3: the water wings that save you if you start drowning
Speaker 3: in an open tat, and your judgments on the plain.
Speaker 3: I'll be the phone, a graph that play is your
Speaker 3: favorite album's back as your line fifteen off to sleep.
Speaker 3: I'll be the platform shoes undo what heredities stunned to
Speaker 3: you you'll have to string to look into my eyes.
Speaker 5: I'll be your winter coat buttons zip straight to the
Speaker 5: throat with the.
Speaker 3: Call so you won't catch cold.
Speaker 5: I want to take you far from this cynics in
Speaker 5: this town and kiss you on the mouth. We'll cut
Speaker 5: our bodies free from that severs of this scene, start
Speaker 5: a brand new colony where everything will change.
Speaker 3: We'll give ourselves new name. I did it, He's or.
Speaker 5: Right The sun will heat the crown under our bare
Speaker 5: feet in this brand new colony, this brand new colony, and.
Speaker 3: Every thing will shame. A free things will shame, then
Speaker 3: a free things will shame.
Speaker 1: That was really beautiful. Thanks man, Thank you. It occurred
Speaker 1: to me listening to that brought up O Kade Fire
Speaker 1: earlier and not for nothing. I mean, I feel like
Speaker 1: give up translanticism. A year later, ArKade Fire's Funeral kind
Speaker 1: of felt like indie rock growing up finally in a
Speaker 1: weird way.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like like to your point of like it sort
Speaker 1: of started to permeate into popular culture at that time.
Speaker 1: Like the songwriting on these two records are incredible, and
Speaker 1: what a great time for music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, I obviously being a part
Speaker 2: of it, you know, it's in my best interest to
Speaker 2: kind of take that position as well. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it just felt like none of us would have had
Speaker 2: the careers we have had or the popularity of success
Speaker 2: that we had about all of the artists that kind
Speaker 2: of laid the groundwork for us in the nineties and
Speaker 2: even before that, you know, So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: bands that you know, we talked about earlier that I
Speaker 2: grew up with that. You know, I felt to this
Speaker 2: day I still deserve more lip service, you know, but
Speaker 2: I suppose that sometime is sometimes is the blessing and
Speaker 2: the curse of being, you know, a cult influence.
Speaker 1: You know, it's fair enough, but you know, I'm sure,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, it feels like a decade
Speaker 1: by decade, so many cult influences are kind of getting
Speaker 1: their dune. I'm sure. I'm sure it'll it'll get there
Speaker 1: at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you see the works of Numero's doing on
Speaker 2: behalf of you know, a lot of a lot of bands.
Speaker 1: Favorite music, A lot is coming from like stuff you know,
Speaker 1: from like the stuff like Numero's putting out or whatever.
Speaker 2: You're like, like Jesus, Yeah, they're doing a phenomenal job.
Speaker 2: And there's a band called Rex that was really influential
Speaker 2: and important to me and Numero. You know there there's
Speaker 2: one a couple of their records that were not available
Speaker 2: on vinyl, and then Lo and Behold coming out in Numeros,
Speaker 2: So I like pre ordered that ship immediately.
Speaker 1: I was like, got to have that.
Speaker 2: Our friends in this band called the American Analog Set,
Speaker 2: who are from Austin Numeros doing a rereleasing their first
Speaker 2: three records, which are wonderful albums. So yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's really it's it's really kind of heartening
Speaker 2: to see a lot of this music kind of have
Speaker 2: a second life. And it's also been just incredibly interesting
Speaker 2: to see what stuff has kind of been hitting in
Speaker 2: the culture in a way that I never would have
Speaker 2: imagined it doing. I mean, like, you know, I love Unwound.
Speaker 1: I think they're really important to me.
Speaker 2: I never in a million years thought that Unwound would
Speaker 2: be a popular band in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 1: I think that's fucking awesome. It's amazing. But it's a.
Speaker 2: Testament to like, yeah, you make great shit. It might
Speaker 2: not hit like in the in it might be before
Speaker 2: it's time, you know.
Speaker 1: There. You know, a lot of this music, a lot.
Speaker 2: Of this books, film, culture, whatever is being kind of
Speaker 2: is resurfacing and finding a new audience.
Speaker 1: And I think that's just how one with you. Man.
Speaker 1: My biggest fear is in dying. My biggest fear is
Speaker 1: dying before like my next favorite record kids, you know,
Speaker 1: uncovered from the sixties or some shit, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I'm so waiting for somebody to put out
Speaker 2: like a a retrospective of this band called the Dovers
Speaker 2: like who that I loved in the sixties. So maybe
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's good for Numero, but somebody,
Speaker 2: somebody out there listening to.
Speaker 1: Someone hears that they do it. Speaking of an American
Speaker 1: Allocks it too. Always always loved Diversion, a choir vandalist.
Speaker 1: It was on the on the Oh thank you at
Speaker 1: Home EP. You guys did that's buddy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those guys.
Speaker 2: But we became friends with those guys. I think we
Speaker 2: met them at Southwest Southwest in ninety nine. It was
Speaker 2: the first band that we had become friends with outside
Speaker 2: of our immediate circle in Seattle or Bellingham. And you know, yeah,
Speaker 2: we did some early touring with them, and you know,
Speaker 2: there are friends to this day. I literally saw, you know,
Speaker 2: I saw a couple of them in Austin, and saw
Speaker 2: when we were in Berlin. One of the guys lives
Speaker 2: in Berlin now, so we've we've maintained a friendship over
Speaker 2: the years. Yeah, they're wonderful people, great band.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. It's wild. It's wild to be in a
Speaker 1: place in my life now where I'm saying shit like now,
Speaker 1: you got.
Speaker 2: To understand this was nineteen ninety eight. You know, we
Speaker 2: didn't have for fucking iPhone. You couldn't just dial up
Speaker 2: a whole food so you couldn't get Ubert who Eats to.
Speaker 1: Bring your food. You know.
Speaker 2: It's like I've been working with some younger artists working
Speaker 2: on music here and there, and it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like, I think one of the things that we're
Speaker 2: about getting older is that you're seeing the world through
Speaker 2: you know, in your mind you look through your eyes
Speaker 2: are still like twenty five or whatever. You know, you're
Speaker 2: still like but then you're around young people and you think, like,
Speaker 2: I'm one of you, I'm a young person. And then
Speaker 2: you start talking at them and you see them glaze
Speaker 2: over and you're like, oh no, I'm like they're day yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: like I'm talking about some I'm on some shit that
Speaker 2: like they have no fucking idea, and it's like why
Speaker 2: should they they don't. It's like they shouldn't know who
Speaker 2: Slint is.
Speaker 1: They don't. Why would they fucking go?
Speaker 2: You know, they got their own they got you know,
Speaker 2: they got their own bands.
Speaker 1: You know, they don't need our band less you know,
Speaker 1: you know, the fun's up things like I'm not even
Speaker 1: I'm thirty three, and so I should still feel a
Speaker 1: little young. But I think because I grew up for
Speaker 1: a fair amount of time, and maybe it's just because
Speaker 1: my family was poor. You know, we had the internet
Speaker 1: much later, and like we didn't even have like we
Speaker 1: didn't have cable and stuff. So like there was there
Speaker 1: was a bit of a fair amount of my life.
Speaker 1: It was like tethered to the real world.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I teach a college course and it's like the fuck.
Speaker 1: It's like, fuck, I'm I am a fucking dinosaur to
Speaker 1: these people.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, man, dude, I know the feeling. But you know what,
Speaker 2: like with age comes wisdom, you know. I don't know
Speaker 2: if anybody, if anybody wants it, but like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's it's been a try it ma'am. Ben Gibbert,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, man. I appreciate you taking the time.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, and thank you for the music most
Speaker 1: of all more than anything.
Speaker 2: Oh, I really appreciate you having me on me. I'm
Speaker 2: a fan of what you guys do on this pod,
Speaker 2: so it's nice to be a guest.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Ben Gibbert for playing live for us and
Speaker 1: going deep on his writing and album creation process. You
Speaker 1: can hear all of our favorite Ben Gibberd songs on
Speaker 1: a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. You can
Speaker 1: subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash
Speaker 1: broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our
Speaker 1: new episodes. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose,
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrell, Ben Talliday, Nisha Venkat, Jordan McMillan, and Eric Sanderman.
Speaker 1: Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others
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Speaker 1: Canny Beats, I'm justin Richmond.