Say what you will about Death Cab for Cutie – especially sans Chris Walla – but they were tight and bright Saturday night. We all know the details: 19 years of music, eight studio albums, two high-profile divorces – founding member, multi-instrumentalist and producer Chris Walla breaking up with the band makes one, Ben Gibbard’s divorce from the Deschanel makes two. Yet, Gibbard and company have evolved and developed into more or less what’s been the same band: a band with a back catalogue, both a blessing and a curse, a band that sings breakup songs, dripping with lyrical venom and vulnerability.
Photo: All is Amazing
Over the years, they’ve transitioned from being a small-time Seattle act, to alt-teen dream Seth Cohen’s favourite band, to becoming the standard bearers of indie rock, and through it all they’ve brought their masses with them, young and old. It’s charming. It’s indicative of a band still going strong – as proven by the hundreds of fans who still stood in a snaking two-floor line at KL Live, 9pm (doors were open as early as 8pm). Kyoto Protocol did a decent job opening the show (they even performed an English version of ‘Jelita’), and by 9.30pm Death Cab for Cutie had dutifully taken over the stage with opener ‘No Room in Frame’.
We were ready to follow them into the dark – and we did, for four songs anyway, until Ben Gibbard and friends went off stage following ‘technical difficulties’, but popped back on after five to ten minutes. The show suffered from a slight sound sludge throughout the night; they didn’t play deeper cuts like 2000’s ‘Company Calls’ or 2002’s ‘We Laugh Indoors’; but these are minor grips, and if you go to a Death Cab show hoping that they’d play all their Death Cab songs, then it’s you, not them.
Photo: All is Amazing
What they did play, over nearly two hours including a four-song encore – was most of ‘Kintsugi’, which was good, but they’d never have made it out of KL alive without also playing ‘I Will Follow You into the Dark’, ‘I Will Posses Your Heart’, ‘Soul Meets Body’, ‘The New Year’ and ‘Transatlanticism’.
It’s important to recognise the moments – the sparks of recognition, when the first few seconds of a song reveals itself to be a fan favourite; the sound of hundreds of swelling voices singing along to Ben Gibbard’s acoustic rendition of ‘I Will Follow You into the Dark’; the ad infinitum chorus of ‘I need you so much closer’. We had followed them into the dark.
Photo: All is Amazing
Photo: All is Amazing
Photo: All is Amazing
Photo: All is Amazing
Death Cab for Cutie played KL Live on Feb 27 as part of 'Good Vibes Presents'. www.goodvibesfestival.com.