Ben Gibbard reflects on two era-defining albums ahead of Seattle shows

Twenty years ago, Ben Gibbard’s highest-profile bands unleashed two certified classics that soundtracked a generation of breakups and college road trips. The 2000s indie kids who played The Postal Service’s “Give Up” and Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism” CDs on repeat (or stole them off Napster) will have a chance to see the reunited bands perform their era-defining albums during a co-headlining run that includes two sold-out Seattle dates at Climate Pledge Arena (Oct. 6-7).

While Death Cab’s remained an indie-rock fixture, coming off one of its best albums in years, it’s the first time The Postal Service’s Jimmy Tamborello, Jenny Lewis and Gibbard have reassembled since a 2013 tour marking the 10th anniversary of their lone album — Sub Pop’s second-biggest seller ever.

Boosted by millennial nostalgia, the strong response to the joint run even surprised Gibbard.

“I wasn’t expecting that we’d be going from a Climate Pledge [show] to two Climate Pledges,” he said. “It’s been amazing and a humbling realization that these records mean so much to people.”

We caught up with the Seattle rock dignitary (and noted Mariners fan) ahead of the tour’s early September kickoff to discuss the seminal records, Pacific Northwest indie rock and the M’s postseason potential.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s it like for you revisiting this specific period of your life 20 years later?

I keep coming back to this joke. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story,” that movie with John C. Reilly. There’s this moment in the beginning where he’s leaning up against the side of the stage offstage and somebody’s like, “Don’t bother him. Before he goes on stage he has to relive every moment of his life.” It’s not so much that as it is, in order to perform these songs and get in the head space, I have to be reminded of the imagery and the people that these songs were written for or about. While we’re playing them, I’m kinda just ruminating on that time.

A regular Death Cab show is playing songs from the last 25 years, so I’m kind of interfacing with every version of myself over the last 25 years. But in this particular case, it’s going to be a trip to just be living in the 25-, 26-year-old version of myself for a couple hours on stage every night.

I’m curious how your relationship has changed with these songs over time. Have any taken on new meaning or felt any more rewarding or emotionally challenging to revisit?

I call them characters, but they’re real people that are in these songs, and there are some people who exist in both records. I was just texting with one of them before this phone call, who lives in New York now, I was like “Hey, are you going to come to this show?” “Yeah, I’m bringing the kids!” A lot of time has passed since these records have come out, so any fallout from the autobiographical nature of these songs has long since been softened.

Three years ago Death Cab performed “Transatlanticism” in full at the Showbox. What do you remember about that night?

Well, we didn’t tell anybody we were doing it. If I recall correctly, we played a couple songs and then we started “[The] New Year” and then played the whole record. It was fun to see people realize what we were doing. I think I may have said something like “You know what we’re doing now, right?”

That was a venue that we dreamed of playing when we were first starting out, so the fact that it was on “Transatlanticism” when we did our first three-night stand at the Showbox was a really important moment for us. Hopefully Showbox forever, but with how Seattle continues to change and evolve — in some ways devolve — we’ll see if it sticks around.

What do you remember about that period of your life and your frame of mind while working on these albums concurrently?

[Death Cab] had taken certainly the longest break we had ever taken at that point, because we were pretty burned out. I was living in this converted house in this attic apartment [in Capitol Hill]. Half of it was my bedroom and half of it was a little makeshift studio. It was the first time in my life that — I certainly didn’t have money with a capital M — but I wasn’t worried about money. There wasn’t this imminent “[Expletive], I need to get a job” thing looming.

We knew we were eventually going to be making a record and getting back on the road, so I just remember having a lot of time. I was single through most of that time, so I was just spending a lot of time going to shows, seeing music, waking up late, writing music, trying ideas. It was just a very fruitful creative time, because at that point we were still a relatively small band in the grand scheme of music. We were indie rock successful, but we weren’t MTV successful, so we moved through our lives with relative anonymity. I’d never gotten nervous that people were anticipating a new record, so I felt very light and very free.

It wasn’t as common then for indie rock bands to incorporate electronic elements so heavily. What appealed to you about working with Jimmy Tamborello?

We had initially done a song together for his Dntel record called “Life is Full of Possibilities” and had such a good time working on it that we just expanded it. At the turn of the century, the early aughties, I was starting to get really turned on to a lot of this music coming out of Germany that was on a label called Morr Music, owned and operated by my now friend Thomas Morr. It was a lot of these kind of Notwist-adjacent side projects of people, a lot of Europeans, who had come up listening to American indie rock, but they were armed with laptops and stuff like that.

I remember seeing Notwist around that time with Jason McGerr, our drummer, and turning to him and being like, “This is the future.” This melding of electronic elements with live instrumentation. That wasn’t the a-ha moment where I turn around, annnnnd Postal Service. But I was starting to be really influenced by that.

The 2000s brought on an indie rock boom nationally.How do you view the Northwest’s place in that era as indie rock exploded to a broader audience?

You know, it’s interesting to me because at the time in 2001-2002, this was like the height of The Strokes, White Stripes, Interpol, first Yeah Yeah Yeahs record. It felt as if the world was focused on New York and Brooklyn. Scuzzier, more garage-y — just cooler music. Meanwhile, we’re over here in Seattle looking like we’re roadies for Pavement making this very unhip, but very earnest music.

There started to bubble up this, I would like to think unpretentious, but very literate, emotive, earnest music that was coming from the Northwest. I don’t want to say it’s like a hangover from the grunge years. But in my mind, especially those first couple Modest Mouse records — “The Lonesome Crowded West” being the ultimate one — that to me is almost a new cultural year zero for Northwest indie rock. Because that record just really spoke to this kind of alienation. It provides a very crystal clear sense of place in the Northwest, but also a deep longing for connection and a sense of isolation up in this little corner.

That record represented like the beginning of a new era. And I think that out in the world, aside from people who were fans of all our bands, these weren’t, like, cool records. People weren’t writing about them as if they were cool, because I think that earnestness is often uncomfortable for some people. It’s much easier to be cool and detached. It’s a lot more difficult to be earnest and heartfelt, because it’s a point of mockery for some people.

Was it ever difficult for you to be such an earnest songwriter back then?

I wouldn’t say it was difficult, because it’s the exact thing that repels some people that draws other people in. The earnestness of my writing and lyricism, it’s the fulcrum upon which people like or dislike the band. And it’s always been that way. Very early on I realized that I could either obsess about the people who disliked what I did or thought that what I was doing was not cool, or I could lean into the people that did like it.

The Postal Service’s “Give Up” became Sub Pop’s second highest-selling record of all time. How did you initially decide to work together and what were the conversations like early on?

Tony Kiewel, who is now the president of Sub Pop, him and Jimmy were really good friends in college. He was like “I took the Dntel song into Sub Pop and said, ‘These guys are thinking about making a record, do we want to sign them?’ And Sub Pop said yes.”

Being young and naive, and maybe a little cocky, you’re kinda like, “Well yeah, it’s not a problem. We just signed to Sub Pop, the biggest indie label in the world and we have two songs. That’s not a problem at all, we can totally work with this.”

Death Cab had the distinction of being the first band to play Climate Pledge Arena when it opened. What do you remember about that night?

What was funny was everything in the catacombs of the arena was not finished. There was drywall dust everywhere and it felt like an Ikea down there. There was just pallets of tables and chairs that have not been built yet or put together. But it was fun.

We were just starting to peak our heads out of our homes after, hopefully, what will have been considered the worst of the pandemic and after not playing to a crowd like that in, what, a couple years at that point. It was a pretty powerful experience to be standing up in front of 18,000 people or whatever it was.

Since I know you’re a big Mariners fan, are you at all concerned about the upcoming Seattle shows potentially conflicting with the Mariners’ playoff schedule? [Editor’s note: Fingers crossed.]

I’ve got the last two weeks [of the regular season] circled, because we play the Astros and the Rangers. It’s possible that we peaked too early. It’s also possible that we’ll win the World Series. I mean, when every part of this team is firing, they could win the World Series. I can’t believe I’m saying that out loud. But they could do it.