“I think the sky’s gonna open up soon.” That was Brendan, looking up at the incredible, but assuringly ominous view above us in Cooper Square. The plan was to meet up with him and Nicole, aimlessly walk around lower Manhattan, then leave for the Death Cab for Cutie show later that night. Our whole afternoon had been marked with that slightly frustrating on/off drizzle the calm before a storm tends to bring, which only clouded what I thought my late walk in Hoboken would be.
In an attempt to beat the rain, I left the last thrift store we stopped at in-between showers, then took the PATH up to 33rd, strolled through the endlessly busy midtown to Madison Square Garden, and got to my seat I have to thank Entertainment Committee for the cheap ticket to what was sure to be a heady throwback to my teenage introversion, a hallmark of which included staying up on weekends with albums introduced by my older sister like Narrow Stairs in my bedroom while watching the Red Bank nightlife go by. I was already sitting by myself, with a book (Jessica Hopper’s “The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic”, necessary prep for meaningful music writing), and listening to some #deep melancholy jams. All I had to do was replace my current stress in finding what I’m good at job-wise with stress in finding what I was good at in the first place, and I’d have that authentic, sixteen-year old experience.
But before all that I had to politely wait through the opener, Explosions in the Sky. After skimming through their discography on Spotify as prep and sitting through most of their time on stage, I wasn’t the biggest fan of their post rock-ascribed sound, nor was Stevens Junior Nicole Regenauer, who remarked that she liked instrumental rock with “a little bit more power.” Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but get into that enveloping, moody tone in between each arena-shaking thunderclap made by guitarist Munaf Rayani literally punching his instrument. They were a smart choice; not only had the band opened up for Death Cab last time they played MSG—a fact Ben Gibbard had pointed out while dedicating the indie prom/college open mic standard, “I Will Follow You into the Dark”, to them—but if there were any group whose set would best act as the opening credits to the Sundance romantic dramedy that was to follow, it’d be them. It also didn’t hurt that moments in songs like “The Birth and Death of the Day” must replicate what would happen if you took Plans’s most transcendent moments and slowed them down 400%.
I quickly stopped by the merch stand during the break. Having paid just ten dollars for the ticket, I felt like I could spend like a king… on, like, one t-shirt. We are talking Stevens student spending here. Senior Kyra Pastore expressed a similar sentiment with the non-college student friendly price of beer. There’s got to be a Consequence of Sound thinkpiece in the works about the correlation between bigger shows and pricer PBR’s.
A quick note about MSG itself: the iconic venue is a lot like the standard Chinese takeout compound sharing its namesake: it can enhance something you enjoy to such an extent that it can leave all involved bloated in the process. (Case-and-point: while seeing the Strokes here back in 2011, huge set pieces that lit up with each hit with in-your-face guitar levels made a not-so-enthused Julian Casablancas more evident.) Thankfully, as soon as the lights dimmed to the ringing of “No Room in Frame,” lead singer/guitarist Ben Gibbard made sure to convey the band’s earnest appreciation, constantly thanking all from general admission to the acrophobia-inducing nosebleed seats throughout the night.
Hand-in-hand with these gestures was the power behind the songs themselves. Up-tempo, drummer Jason McGerr-featuring cuts like The Photo Album’s “Why’d You Want to Live Here” and Codes and Keys’s “Doors Unlocked and Open” found a new intensity in the arena context. The venue doubly provided space for fleshed-out, graver tunes like the newer “You’ve Haunted Me All My Life” and “Black Sun”. Tracks from Narrow Stairs were a particular hit with Stevens students, with Kyra remarking how “I Will Possess Your Heart”, a “throwback” of hers, had a “fun, live sound.” Junior Miranda Rohn appreciated “Cath…” alongside the aforementioned “I Will Follow You into the Dark,” which she felt was “very intimate” to the point of almost making her “tear up because of all the memories associated” with it. The rest of the crowd was similarly receptive, most audibly with fans blaring their tortured MySpace-era hearts to singles like “Soul Meets Body.” (Plans recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, a fact for those who needed another “holy crap it’s 2015” moment.) The warm response also welcomed new touring members, Dave Depper and Zac Rae. Signed on after the amicable departure of founding guitarist and producer Chris Walla, the two multi-instrumentalists helped fully realize material from Something About Airplane’s “President of What?” to newer, synthpoppier tracks like Kintsugi’s “Everything’s a Ceiling”.
This engaging reception was made easier by the band’s staple lyricism, a point of contention for fans and critics alike; in revisiting Transatlanticism upon its tenth anniversary reissue for Pitchfork, Ian Cohen referred to this as the album as the turning point for Gibbard’s “expanding… scope and ambition” in crafting “compact ways to express the same ideas” it would’ve taken a thesaurus to understand in work prior. While this disaffected longtime fans who appreciated the nuances of the songwriter’s obscured subtext, newer ones grasped the material easily with the use of simple metaphors (maps and ships relating distance in a relationship), personal pronouns like “our”, “we”, “I” and “you” allowing those to place themselves in the songs, and grounding-but-universal pleas like “Can you tell me why you have been so sad?” and “I should have given you a reason to stay” to drive the point through the heart and to the brain, rather than the other way around. It seemed as though Gibbard realized that, if he utilized the same multilayered language in earlier work (i.e. “Champagne from a Paper Cup” with its drunken conversations reflecting an inner anxiety or the December chill of “We Laugh Indoors” muddying an apparent unresolved dread), it would not only distract listeners from finding resonance in his plight for intimacy across state lines, but it might also prevent them from finding what he would later describe in “Marching Bands of Manhattan” as “comfort in sound.”
Perhaps the best (and admittedly less wordy) encapsulation of the latter was given when Gibbard introduced “You Are a Tourist” during the band’s VH1 Storytellers as “a series of affirmations in an otherwise dark and cruel world.” For as much as we can reductively characterize them so willfully as emotive, broad, not-so-rock-but-close-enough musicians who write songs that are, as The O.C.’s Summer Roberts tellingly put it, “like one guitar and a whole lot of complaining,” what has made Death Cab for Cutie such an established act is their effortlessness in expressing their own experiences in a passionate and universal fashion whilst still maintaing sincerity. As Nicole explained in her personal connection with “Tourist,” “it’s kind of telling all the small-town kids that there are better places than their hometown,” alluding to how her adolescence mirrored the lyrics: “If you feel just like a tourist in the city you were born then it’s time to go / And define your destination / There’s so many different places to call home.” Whether you’re looking for someone to emote what you’re feeling without saying it, a shoulder to cry on in less-than-stellar times, or a silver lining in a stormy environment, the most poignant comfort is also the most accessible.
So, when the band came back for an encore consisting of “Passenger Seat”, “Marching Bands of Manhattan” (of course), and the title track to Transatlanticism, the latter’s crying out of “I need you so much closer” didn’t just gain its reverberance through the massive speaker set-up nor the voices of hundreds, but through the liberation of a collective “oh, you feel like this too?”, bringing the show to a cathartic end that can inspire a thousand Arcade Fires. In the distorted aftermath, Brian Eno’s informally anthemic “Here Come the Warm Jets” blasted over the overjoyed audience as they took to public transit. And, in what can be a) a recreation of the events detailed in their closing song, b) a natural embodiment of what many people feel like after spinning a Death Cab record, or c) a perfectly timed coincidence that made this almost too easy to wrap up, it started to rain. To paraphrase, the show let out and the clouds above opened up.
Explosions in the Sky Setlist (s/o to setlist.fm):
CATASTROPHE AND THE CURE
THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF THE DAY
YASMIN THE LIGHT
LET ME BACK IN
THE ONLY MOMENT WE WERE ALONE
Death Cab for Cutie Setlist:
NO ROOM IN FRAME
CROOKED TEETH
WHY’D YOU WANT TO LIVE HERE
BLACK SUN
THE NEW YEAR
THE GHOST OF BEVERLY DRIVE
GRAPEVINE FIRES
LITTLE WANDERER
COMPANY CALLS
PRESIDENT OF WHAT?
YOU’VE HAUNTED ME ALL MY LIFE
WHAT SARAH SAID
I WILL FOLLOW YOU INTO THE DARK
I WILL POSSESS YOUR HEART
EVERYTHING’S A CEILING
YOU ARE A TOURIST
DOORS UNLOCKED AND OPEN
CATH…
SOUL MEETS BODY
BIXBY CANYON BRIDGE
//
PASSENGER SEAT
MARCHING BANDS OF MANHATTAN
TRANSATLANTICISM
This article is part of WCPR ReWrite: a new, music-centered column for the Stute written by the radio station’s members. Those interested in participating should contact Andy Waldron at gm@wcpr.org. WCPR meetings are held Wednesdays at 9:30pm in the basement of Jacobus.
