B enjamin Gibbard is aware of your nostalgia for Death Cab for Cutie . For nearly a year he’s been living it, performing both the band’s breakout album Transatlanticism and Give Up, the sole release from his side project the Postal Service, back to back and in full to mark 20 years since their release. For some artists, an anniversary tour might register as an acknowledgment that their best days are in the past.
For Gibbard, it’s a privilege to be able to relive them. When the Give Up and Transatlanticism double-header kicked off last September, it was described ( by Pitchfork , the defining arbiter of mid-2000s music) as “peak millennial nostalgia, in the best way”. Gibbard, who turns 48 on Sunday, had anticipated a warm reception, knowing the special place both albums occupy for fans.
“You’re only going to a show like that if you have a vested interest in the album – or albums – that are being performed,” he says. “But I don’t think that I really had a sense of how cathartic it would be, for the audience and for all of us.” Today, Gibbard and Death Cab for Cutie define the moment in the mid-2000s when a new wave of alternative bands were just starting to enter the mainstream.
Transatlanticism, released in October 2003, began Death Cab’s ascent, buoyed by singles The Sound of Settling and Title and Registration, two of their best-loved songs, both widely used in soundtracks – most famously, as Gibbard points out, “a little show called The OC �.