The Postal Service will be delivering their new concert film Everything Has Changed on November 24, and we got a sneak peek Saturday.
The duo of Ben Gibbard (Death Cab for Cutie) and Jimmy Tamborello get some help from Jenny Lewis for "Nothing Better," which is a memorable tune for two reasons:
- Gibbard utters perhaps the most ignorant sports lyric on the planet: "I will block the door like a goalie tending the net in the third quarter of a tied-game rivalry." This is pretty much impossible. Hockey is implied, but that has three periods, not quarters. Soccer, the less likely answer, has two halves. Gibbard put this contradiction on record more than a decade ago, and has shown little to no remorse.
- Jenny Lewis alert.
Lewis is coming off a new album, The Voyager, and she's light years away from a few Postal Service cameos on the iconic 2003 album Give Up.
"Nothing Better" was her finest moment on the album, and she pretty easily outperforms an off-pitch Gibbard here:
Gibbard recently discussed the future of Death Cab sans founding member and producer Chris Walla.
"Oh, there is undoubtedly a line in the sand here," he said. "The position we're in — it's a blessing and a curse — is that people feel very strongly about the period of this band in which they got into us. We're fighting against people who say 'Why can't you make a record like the one I heard when I was 20 years old?' And the answer is we can't. We can just move forward, and create a new period."
There are plenty of groups that have survived losing primary members — and a whole graveyard of acts that did not.
"I make no comparisons as far as cultural significance with this band, but I think about Wilco, and the changes they've gone through over the years, and how there have been moments in that band where people have left and you've thought 'How are they ever going to continue?'" Gibbard said. "I look at them and I think 'We've lost a very talented musician, but there are other very talented musicians with new perspectives and new ways of looking at creating music.' It's on us to make this a good period."
