Live: The Postal Service

18th May 2013

Academy

Some reunions are more likely than others. Morrissey once said that the only way to get The Smiths back together would be to “shoot us and drag our bodies into the same room.” Conversely, you’d surely get astronomically long odds on Oasis never dusting off their achingly rusty back catalogue when somebody puts enough money in front of them. Last year, Ben Gibbard used his time off from Death Cab for Cutie to put together a solo record, comprised of odds and ends from the past few years that didn’t really fit with the band dynamic, and swore blind in every interview he gave in support of it that there would be no further activity from his platinum-selling side project, The Postal Service.

Gibbard would probably be at pains to point out that he can get himself off the hook on a technicality; he only ever said there wouldn’t be another album from The Postal Service – their sole long-player, Give Up, is one of the most successful records in the history of the legendary Sub Pop label. It still came as an enormous surprise, though, to learn that the band would head back out on the road this year for shows on both sides of the Atlantic, in celebration of Give Up‘s tenth anniversary, and in support of the obligatory reissue.

Quite why Gibbard chose to reunite with Jimmy Tamborello, who releases music under the name Dntel, might never be clear. The pair have given precious few interviews since January’s announcement, with the most prominent being a seven-minute promotional spot for the label that offered little in the way of new information. Irrespective of whether it was money, profile or a rekindled friendship that convinced them to schedule a run of dates that will surely be their last – a ‘one-time offer’, as Gibbard termed it on Twitter –  the inclusion of shows in Manchester and Brixton provides an opportunity for closure for British fans, the vast majority of whom won’t have made it to the band’s one previous UK gig back in 2003.

Back then, Jenny Lewis put duties with Rilo Kiley on hold to help flesh out the live lineup; with no such distractions this time around, she returns to the fold alongside Laura Burhenn, who was part of the Bright Eyes set-up two years ago when they toured The People’s Key extensively. Tonight’s show was originally announced for the nine hundred capacity Academy 2; it proved an underestimation of the group’s pulling power that bordered on the scandalous, as tickets still disappeared in under five minutes, even after the move next door.

Arriving onstage at nine o’clock sharp, following a charming support slot from Liverpudlian trio Stealing Sheep, the decision to kick off with Give Up opener ‘The District Sleeps Alone Tonight’ is predictable; less so is the band’s live setup, with Tamborello’s obligatory laptop rig augmented by dual guitars from Gibbard and Lewis, and a drum kit that both will sit behind before the evening’s out. Herein lies the joy of this Postal Service reunion; the show itself has been wonderfully well thought through. For vast swathes of those gathered – not least the group themselves – tonight’s about little more than nostalgia, but enough deft touches and smart nuances have been worked into the songs to make them feel new again; Lewis’ soothing vocal outro on ‘District’ brings a refreshing humanity to a song so pre-possessed with loneliness and isolation, whilst apocalyptic anthem ‘We Will Become Silhouettes’ is suddenly the spark for an all-out dance party.

Unsurprisingly, Give Up is aired in its entirety, and its live counterparts provide the opportunity to reflect on the subtle nature of its diversity, both lyrically and musically; on ‘Sleeping In’, Gibbard mulls over the abstract signifiers of an idealistic society – “there was never any mystery / of who shot John F Kennedy” – with Tamborello adding a rare backing vocal to his standard palette of skittering electronic beats. ‘Clark Gable’ sees Gibbard channel Woody Allen in Play It Again, Sam as he romanticises about the eponymous hero of the cinema’s golden age, whilst the hazy ‘Recycled Air’ is as tentative as the “teenage lovers between the sheets” that the lyrics allude to.

Beyond the ten-track record, of course, the set needs a little fleshing out; ‘Turn Around’ and ‘A Tattered Line of String’, the only survivors of an aborted attempt at a second album, provide a tantalising hint of what might have been, and excellent b-side ‘Be Still My Heart’ outweighs the inclusion of the trudging ‘There’s Never Enough Time’, which should have been sacrificed in favour of their stirring cover of ‘Against All Odds’. There is, however, an oddly charming take on Beat Happening’s ‘Our Secret’, on which Lewis takes to the drums. Her continued inclusion in the live fold is perhaps the reunion’s great masterstroke, allowing Gibbard – who has responded to being thrown out of his guitar-based comfort zone with some hideous dad-dancing – to divest some of his responsibilities as frontman, and allowing for big hitters like breakup duet ‘Nothing Better’ to be aired in unadulterated form.

The crowd pleasers are all present and correct – ‘Such Great Heights’ sparks a mass singalong – but it’s the care and attention with which the quieter cuts have been treated that really catch the eye tonight; the brooding ‘This Place Is a Prison’, with Gibbard’s whispered tale of a drug-infested Seattle bar floating over squelching beats, is a case in point, as is a gorgeous rendition of the song that started it all for the encore; ‘(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan’, the Death Cab-Dntel collaboration that gave birth to The Postal Service, is presented in wonderfully delicate fashion, the scratchy synths of the studio version eschewed in favour of a gentle, guitar-driven introduction.

If for no other reason, it seems a shame that there aren’t likely to be any further Postal Service tours purely because the band themselves seem to be having an awful lot of fun. Gibbard, who bounds across the stage with a permanent grin, is about as far from the intense persona he projects in Death Cab as he can get, and Lewis moves between the raucous and the subtle in a manner not afforded to her since her Rilo Kiley days. The full-throated, overblown singalong on closer ‘Brand New Colony’ is a million miles from the introspective affair many had expected, but it’s certainly fitting; tonight was about the celebration of a record that shouldn’t have taken this long to reach a wide live audience, and rewarding the fans that refused to give up on it.