Ben Gibbard

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. In September, Ben Gibberd, the founder of Death Cab for Cutie, will set out on a nationwide tour to celebrate two very different albums that have come to define his career. Both albums came out in two thousand and three. The first was called Give Up, and it was a collaboration with his friend and producer Jimmy Tambarello. They'd made it while Gibberd was taking a break from the relentless cycle of touring and releasing music with deathcap They called their new band The Postal Service. Give Up steadily built momentum, found critical acclaim, and eventually became Gibbert's first platinum selling record. Musically, The Postal Service incorporated various synth and New Wave inspired elements behind Gibbert's confessional songwriting style, which set a precedent for many of the Indian electronic releases over the following death gad Later that same year, Gibbert went back to his band roots and released Death Cab for Cutie's breakthrough album, Transatlanticism. This fall, Gibberton's band will play both Transatlanticism and Give Up in their entirety. For someone who listened to both of these records incessantly in two thousand and three and four. I'm excited to say he'll also play three acoustic conditions of songs from those classic records. In this episode and today's episode. I also talked to Ben Gibberd about the conditions that led to the most successful year of his career, and he gets candid about the woman who inspired multiple songs on Transatlanticism, including the brutally honest Tiny Vessels. This is broken record liner notes for the digital Age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's my interview with Ben gibbert Man. Thanks for doing this. Oh dude, I'm stoked to be here. Thanks for having me. Man. I can't believe it's been twenty years since both of these records, Translanticism and the Postal Service Record. Yeah, time certainly seems to be moving quicker the older I get. I felt like just yesterday we passed the ten year anniversary. That really does feel like yesterday that I went to I saw that tour, and that feels literally like yesterday or a year ago or two, you know, not ten. Yeah. Well, I think we get a pass for the pandemic. I think I'm now referring to things that happened in my life as if they happened six months ago, but they happened in the fall of twenty nineteen. Time has become this very amorphous kind of element in my life since the pandemic, and I think it might be one of the reasons that ten years ago does feel like it wasn't that long ago. The funny thing is, for me was in hindsight understanding that you felt that this period of your life two thousand and three was also pretty special, because it was special from my relationship to your music. I had stray Death Cab tracks leading up to the Postal Service record release, but I remember my thirteenth birthday being under record store and the guy being and like, you need to check out this Postal Service record. I've never heard of it. He goes, this is this is this is Ben Gibbert from Death Cab for CUTI I know, really okay, I'm getting and he's like a n S. He's got beats behind explaining to me and it's kind of like the weirdest thing, but he wouldn't let me leave. I think I bought something else just in case I didn't like it, but he wouldn't let me leave without also buying that. My mom gave me some money, bought it, took it home, put it on, and from those first opening chords of the District sleeps Alone, my mind was blown. It was hard to believe to process that it was you from Death Cab for Cutie making this kind of music. What were the first songs you wrote for that record? I think that the first thing we did might have been District Sleeps Alone and the first song on the record, because the project had kind of come out of Jimmy and my collaboration for his record that he did under the name Didn't Tell, and he had a bunch of people doing guest vocals on it, and through a mutual friend, he got a hold of me and asked me to do a tune with him, and that went so well that we just kind of decided, like, well, why, yeah, do you want to do like an EP of this or like do some more songs. This was kind of relatively effortless and really fun, so I believe it was. I believe District was the first thing that he sent me, And yeah, we were just kind of often running. You know. The interesting thing about give Up to Me is that there weren't any other songs recorded for it. It was literally just those songs that we had were the record, and we were you know, I believe that we had signed to Subpop based off of that didn't tell song, and I believe the district sleeps Alone Tonight and maybe one other song like Sleeping In or something like that. But we basically had a deal with Subpop before we had a record. Did you guys approach Subpop? Right? They just happened to hear some of the stuff. Well Tony Keiwell, who was doing an R for them at the time, who's now still with the company, but I think I believe he's a vice president or something. Jimmy and Tony had gone to Loyola University together and they DJs at KXEL You yeah, exactly. Yeah, So Tony had gotten word of the project from Jimmy just them being friends. And my understanding of it was that Tony took some of these early demos in and just said, hey, this is you know, Ben from Deathcab, Jimmy from didn't tell they're doing a record, you know, should we put it out? And you know, everybody, at least enough people agreed to say yes that we ended up signing with Subpop. So that was I mean, looking back on it as I'm even as I'm telling the story right now, it seems I still kind of can't believe that it happened that way. That's not how bands tend to get signed, right, I mean, maybe maybe more so now than before, in the sense that you can put out a song on band camp or on YouTube or SoundCloud or whatever, and somebody can find it and then it might end in some kind of record deal. But in two thousand and one, two thousand and two, that's not how shit went down. So you know, at that time, if you were in a band, you were playing show was you had a repertoire material and maybe somebody from a label saw you and then we're like, you guys are great, we should do a record together. But it's almost as if the way the Pulservice ended up on Subpop, you know, it is more the way in which maybe sometimes people look get signed now than it was twenty years ago. Well, it's also like it was way ahead of the way that people make music, you know, it's much more into the way people make music now. In two thousand and three, that record felt it felt like we hadn't heard anything like that record before, and then by like twenty and ten, it felt like that was kind of the way a lot of people were making music, like like a singer songwriters, a lot of indie artists, those electronic elements included, and then you guys were really kind of like ahead of that wave. I mean, there are people before, but to have done it as sort of as tastefully as you guys did it, I don't know that. I don't know that I had heard that really. Yeah, I think in some ways we were before our time, not in the sense that we were doing anything radically new, but that electro pop as a medium for indie rockers had not really come into fashion yet. And you know, when I think about give up and I think about influences going into it, I mean we are referencing depeche Mode and OMD and Yeahs and a lot of Human League like stuff that was we kind of grew up on as dudes who are now in our mid late forties growing up into eighties with this first kind of wave of postcraft work, kind of synthpop, where all of these kind of young people in the late seventies early eighties were realizing they could take this new technology and make pop songs out of it. And then it seems from my perspective, and you know, there might be some listeners who would push back on this, I might not be entirely correct in this, but it felt like by the late nineties early aughts that electronic music had become very much like a connoisseur's music and like a process oriented underground music. There weren't a lot of people making pop songs with electronics at that point, at least not anywhere near even like what would be considered the mainstream of indie rock at that time. So I just kind of feel like we were in the right place at the right time, revitalizing a style of music that enough people were familiar with to make it feel like it was something that they could kind of understand fairly easily, but that had been out of the vocabulary long enough that it felt new and fresh. I would even say, because you're you're right, like when you're referencing like Human League and all those groups that I guess were influences on that project. But you know, there was like tenderness to it that I don't think i'd heard in like electropop before, and like a focus on songwriting that I don't know anywhereas in those other forms. It feels like the music wasn't just the track or just the production, but it was really focused around the production. And I don't know, I don't know if it's that it was a combination of Jimmy, who was sort of more the person who would produced the track, and you, who are more coming really from a songwriting from a band perspective. That really helped it fuse the two. But I don't know that i'd heard like electronic music in that way with the kind of that beautiful crafted song quality. Well, I appreciate you saying that, as I still keep coming back to my position that I just think that we were kind of the first people to kind of connect these two, Yeah, connect these dots like a confessional, kind of emotive style of songwriting that I guess now have become known for but certainly was kind of development at that point in my career, and then melding it with Jimmy's kind of sense of you know, give up as an avant garde record by any stretch of the imagination, but you know, Jimmy's coming from an experimental electronic background, but also with this kind of very great ear for pop songs. And you know, there are a couple of moments on the record that are a little bit kind of out there, but for the most part, it's a pretty straightforward pop record. And Jimmy gets a lot of that credit too, because he was sending me these things. Until I worked with Jimmy, I'd never collaborate with anybody in that fashion where somebody would send me music and I would write melody and lyrics and additional arrangement over top of it. At that time, I was very much priding myself and being like the songwriter in the band in Death Cabin, as a young person who was insecure, very kind of staunchly protective of my role in the band for fear that if anybody else were to write a note of it, then somehow I would cease being the song I write a band or whatever bullshit, that whatever kind of ridiculous position that I took at the time being a young insecure person. But with Jimmy, I found that, having had half the work done for me, I could merely just react to what I was hearing, so I would. You know, he would send me a CD with one or two instrumentals on it, and I would put it in a CD walkman, and just walk around Seattle for hours at a time, just kind of humming to myself. For I might keep like a little notebook in my pocket and write a lyric, idea down or whatever, and I would just kind of go for these long walks and just listening to these tracks over and over again, you know, having no way to record a melody or I didn't have it. I didn't have an iPhone of course, so I couldn't just sing into the voice notes or whatever. But you know, the songs would I would just kind of react to what he was sending me in the imagery that the music kind of provided me became a fairly easy jumping off point to write the narrative of the song, which I found to be really liberating. It took me to some places lyrically that I had not found myself in, and as I said, it was just it was easier doing half the work, So you know, it just allowed me the space to be writing Transatlanticism and also writing my half of give Up, because they weren't in conflict with each other, Like I was at home with a guitar trying to write songs for a trans Atlanticism or what would become trans Atlanticism, and then I would get a CD in the mail from Jimmy on say a Thursday, and be like, oh cool, Jimmy sent me a song. Well, I'm gonna work on that today, and then I'd do that, and then I would go back on Friday and get back to working on the thing I was working on before. And was there any creative bleed between the two, Like I mean, as you were working on the both simultaneously, were you ever at a point conflating ideas or having stuff that you had written on say a Friday for Translanticism and by the next week you're working on some stuff with Jimmy and maybe that idea is going over there or was it pretty segmented in in your brain? It was very segmented, probably because back to being like a young, insecure person. The guys in Deathcab knew I was doing this record with Jimmy, and it wasn't so much that I felt a conflict of interest, as much as I didn't want to give anybody in the band the idea that I was prioritizing a quote, good idea une to this side project over my main band, So I lived in a particular kind of type of fear that I guess what I didn't want to do is turn in a bunch of demos to the Deathcab dudes and be like, here's what I've been writing recently and have them fixate on one particular song and be like that one's the best one, and then for me to be like, oh, actually, now that one's off the table, because you know, I used a bunch of the lyrics for this Pulsal Service song. So in order to not have that even be remotely an issue, I was only writing to the stuff that Jimmy was sending me and trying to allow those songs to be very kind of separate thoughts away from anything that I was doing writing for what would become Transatlanticism. And you felt like that that process did take you somewhere, be segmenting the two writing processes between the Deathcab upcoming Deathcab record Translanticism and the Postal Service stuff, and then only writ into Jimmy's track that took you to places lyrically you hadn't necessarily been or hadn't mind before. Yeah, I mean I could never fathom writing a song like Sleeping In or Clark Gable for Deathcab. You know those songs in particular, But just something like sleeping In is kind of like, it's kind of an absurd thought, you know, it's kind of an absurd lyric, kind of a whimsical daydream of a lyric fairly resonated with the thirteen year old I'm telling you, that's what I was doing. I was sleeping In. That's great, I'm glad to hear that. But it's that's I've realized. I've only realized I think I realized at the time, but I've definitely gotten an appreciation for it since then. That I never would have picked up a pen and wrote lyrics like I did for Sleeping In a top of anything. I'd be writing for Deathcab myself. So, you know, for whatever reason, kind of just the tone of what Jimmy was sending me allowed each song to be its own separate thought that could exist away from Deathcab and not kind of come into conflict creatively with what I was doing over here. What do you think lyric like what and sleeping in or Clark Gable? What in those lyrics are are so whimsical to that you couldn't have imagined, you know, those being Deathcab lyrics. I suppose it's because I couldn't see myself getting if I was sitting in this room with the guitar writing a song right now or let's let's not know right now in two thousand and one or two thousand and two, and the idea came to me to write a song about recreating the best parts of a relationship as a way to kind of make one's self feel good about how the relationship had deteriorated, as is kind of the story of Clark Gable. That would seem to me to be a ridiculous thing to write a song about, especially given the kind of music that I was writing with Deathcab, which tended to be a lot sparser, a lot slower, you know. I remember turning in the demo for a sound of settling song on Translanticism, and it was a lot slower. It was kind of like bing bing bing bing bing bing bing, like kind of a more mid tempo maybe ninety bp M kind of kind of vibe. Because I had this aversion towards fast songs. I thought that songs that were like up tempo were not cool or something, And I suppose that is probably a result of kind of coming of age with slint and shipping news and coding and low and kind of having the slow core kind of thing be a large part of my early musical vocabulary. That I thought that fast songs like weren't cool, So I would never felt have felt I would have been able to pull off a lyric like Clark Gable or Sleeping In because of just the tone of the lyric against the music that I was writing that was a little bit slower, sadder, sparser. A lyric like that would draw too much of attention to itself at ninety bpm. But when you when it's like in kind of more of like a club banger, it might it might be equally kind of farcical, but at least there's other elements of the thing to focus on. If you think the lyrics suck, you know, no, I mean it's really Gable. Because I was listening to it again obviously because we're going to be talking, and I was like, man, Clark Gable, I'd never picked up on it, and I didn't listen to the record maybe since the last tenth anniversary, like in a real way where I was really sitting down to listen. But there's like a like a disco groove on the base going on clout Gable. It's kind of like it was. It's like absurd, but it completely it all works. I love how eclectic the record is. Yeah, it's funny with that song. There's a good friend of mine named Thomas Moore who has a wonderful label in Berlin called More Music, and you know, a lot of the stuff they were putting out in the turn of the century like Lollipuna, Miss John Soda, b Fleshman, a lot of this stuff that was kind of this like early melding of electronics in indie rock. And I remember when I first met Thomas. He was I believe he was friends with Jimmy or they knew each other. In his very German way, he was like, yeah, I had listened to that Postal Siss record and I hated that song cloud Gable so much. I just hated it. And I was just like okay, man, like yeah, it's like he's because it was so discoy and like I didn't like it, and it was like and it's it's it's funny. How like whenever we played that song. I guess we haven't played it very often, but like when we were playing on the last tour and probably when we do in the next for I always kind of Thomas while always kind of pop up in my mind of his brutal honesty about what he thought about that song, because of everything about it is pretty over the top. Yeah, and it's like also not over the top, I don't know, but at least not by today's standards. No, not by today's standards, but you know, um yeah, it's like there wasn't anything musically similar to it at the time. At least elements of that song had existed beforehand, as we've already discussed. But what I thought was so great about Jimmy sending that song and it was just like it was really just anything goes. I mean, there was no you know, we we weren't making this record thinking that anybody was really gonna hear it, aside from the people who maybe were already fans of Jimmy's and people who were Deathcad fans. I might be curious about this project. But before you get the subpop deal. I mean, was there a world where you were just doing this for fun and no one would have heard this? Like, was did you guys start collaborating with the idea that we will put something out or was it let's just have fun? I think. I mean, I've always been a pretty destination oriented person. So when we were talking about initially like doing a couple more songs or an EP or something, you know, there were a couple of small labels that were around in our kind of circle of friends that were like, oh, I'd put that out. Yeah, let us know if you want to put that out. So not that everything I've written has been written with the goal of releasing it, of course, like I've written way more music that hasn't been released than has. But at that time I certainly felt cocky enough to think that what we would be making would be good enough that somebody would want to put it out. And I guess at the time I didn't see the point in just making music with somebody else that without without the goal of having it be out in the world. Yeah, it just felt like, well, yeah, if we're making a record, let's make a record. You know, let's let's do it. Let's let's go in with a goal in mind, and if we fall short of that goal, that's fine. But at least we weren't just, you know, dicking around. I don't know. I love playing music, I love writing music, but I'm I'm very I've always been in awe of people who are professional musicians who make music for fun, if this makes any sense, Like I remember years ago we played Neil Young's Bridge School benefit and over and Gillian Welsh and David Rawlings, who are two of my favorite musicians, two of my favorite people. I love the records they were playing as well, and they were just often the corner at a party just playing music. The whole was this party at Neil's ranch. Yeah it's ranch, Yeah, amazing, like the pre Bridge School ranch party, yeah exactly. And they and they weren't playing music necessarily for anybody other than themselves and whomever might just kind of stumble into the room. And I just was really taken with that. And it was a part of me that wished I could have that relationship to music. But I've never had that relationship to it. It's always been a tool. It's always been a tool of expression and not necessarily something to do to pass time or to like have fun. Not to say that I don't have fun playing music, but if you and I were in a room and you're like, what do you want to do right now, it's like, I don't know, do you want to play some Kinks songs? And I'd be like, no, let's do something else. I don't want to play as somebody else's songs. You know that's because you don't consider yourself a guitar player, really, right, No, I do not know. I'm definitely not, which is probably which is crazy to me, but also it's probably why like that, I think that has to come from well maybe not, but primarily it scenes in life that comes from the people who fancy themselves guitar players. You know, it might be Yeah, I also don't know a lot of songs. I don't. I know my songs, and then a handful of songs by some of my favorite bands or songwriters. But I'm really bad at knowing what the lyrics are. The songs that I haven't written, I often get them wrong, even songs that have been my favorite songs since I was a teenager. Five or six years ago, I was making this record I was covering all of teenage fan clubs. Band I'm going to ask, who are my favorite band? And this record, well, I don't think it's their best record, is my favorite of theirs because of where it came into my life at the time it did. And I was still like emailing Norman Blake from time to time asking him, like, what is the lyric in that song? How does that one go? Because and I felt foolish even asking him because this I've been listening to this record at that point for over about, you know, thirty years, and I realized in attempting to play these songs that I didn't actually know many of them. I didn't know what the lyrics were, I didn't know what the chords were. So were you not like when you were first starting to write songs? Were you not? It seems like a lot of people the process of learning to write songs, he's like playing other people's songs and then like just modifying or making them your own, or modifying and or changing a couple you know, like early on at least, was that not how you got into making music, was doing like covers and things a little bit, but it was you know, it was like a high school band, like poorly trying to or bad brains pay to come, or you know, some bad religion song or like a you know whatever it was. It was that kind of shit. It was like nothing, you know, for whatever reason, I've never had this desire to pull songs apart and see how they work. Okay. It wasn't like I'm going to like learn Beatles chords, like how did Yeah, I mean, I guess I did. When I was learning how to play guitar. I taught myself from a Beatles fake book originally, and where you would have the picture of the chords of the chord and where to put your fingers and like a mine or nine is like this, yeah, exactly, and these guys have really weird chords. Um, so I guess, and I guess. I guess I'm lying a bit. I guess I did some of that, but it didn't it didn't feel as if I was doing it for educational purposes as much as I was. I just wanted to sing the song, yeah you know, or I just I just wanted to play guitar and I didn't have I hadn't written any of my own songs. So I guess these Beatles songs will have to do. You know, I guess, I guess here, there and everywhere we'll have to do. You know, yeah, you talked about well, well, first of all, before we go back into the records, tell me about the about Bridge School and about that that party had Neil's ranch beforehand. Being a person who's like, I'm not going to go off and play guitar in a corner, it feels like it feels very much like that's what's happening around that weekend. So was it like a weird thing to take part in? It was wild? I mean at that I think this was two thousand and six, so we we had in two thousand and four we had done some touring with Pearl Jam and Neil had come out for some of those shows. And you know, the this tour if people are not familiar with it, which of course why would they be. It was twenty years ago. It was called the Vote for Change Tour. And there are a number of kind of legacy acts and huge names, all descending upon swing states and playing a concert in a particular swing state on the same day. So Pearl Jam and you know us, we might be playing in Columbus uh, you know RM and Bruce Springstein are they're playing in Cincinnati. So and so is playing here and so on and so forth. Right, so that was kind of the big voter registration drive, and you know, we were going to defeat Bush and everything else. And so that was the first my first experience or our first experience with being around like really famous musicians, and that was incredibly nerve racking at first. And we felt, you know, it's like very you know, being around somebody like Bruce Springstein, even just for an hour at some kind of presser, was just like, holy shit, that's Bruce Springstein, and be cool man, don't don't ask him any dumb questions, you know. And so by the time we did Bridge School in two thousand and six, it wasn't as if being around people like that had certainly not become normal, but we were a little bit less self conscious and nervous. And it's not like we we certainly didn't feel like we belonged there, but that at least we realized that we were invited there, right, so people had invited us, they wanted us to be there, so it would be okay to go up to day growl I like say hey man, how's it going, and not have him or anybody else be like, I'm sorry, who do you think you are talking to me? You know, everybody was super specific thing that happened there, like did you meet Dave Growl there? Yeah? I met, I met Grol there, I met because that was really great. I mean, that was an incredible year. I think that year it was Neil of course, Pearl Jam Trent Resner was played with a prepared piano and a string section. Brian Wilson played, I believe as well um food Fighters. I might have mentioned Gil and Dave. I mean it was. It was just an unbelievable year and being at Neil's house insane For those who don't know, you know these benefit shows they would occur at Shoreline Amphitheater, South San Francisco, but Neil the night before the first show would have a party at his ranch, which was way up in the mountains and you would go down this single lane road you know, sheer drops to your death on one side and you drive way out there and then that's then this is his house and there's you know, there's food and drinks, people hanging out. Yeah, and it was a trip I mean it was a real trip to just take in this scene that you know, we had been invited to, and we were very thankful for being invited to, but it was clearly above our pay grade, right, so we were just kind of like trying to be cool, trying to not you know, make sure nobody drank too much or did anything stupid. Yeah, and just kind of take the whole scene in and yeah, it was, it was, It was. It was pretty phenomenal. It's a pretty amazing thing to be a part of. We're having grown up in the Seattle area. Meeting Dave must have been pretty crazy, right, Oh. Absolutely. I remember when I was in high school driving down five in Wallingford with a friend and for whatever reason, Dave Role was just standing on the corner talking to somebody and we were driving past. You know, there was no way to get out of the car. We were like on the road, you know, but I remember just like somebody be like, holy shit, that's ap Rowl. It's say Browl, Like why is Dave Rowl on the street, you know, and you know that kind of I've of course had to tamp down that level of fandom when I first met him, and you know at this point now driving off the side of the road. Yeah, So it's but I think that you know, and since you know, over the years we have become acquaintances and have played some shows together and done some stuff together, and he's a wonderful dude. But I think that we all start out as fans, right, Yeah, And you know, we're we become fans of people usually at a very formative important time in our lives. We're in music. At least for me and I'm sure for you, music becomes everything to us. It's like everything we want to do, it's everything we want to talk about, it's everything we want to be. And those artists that are so formative to us, you know, in our teenage years especially, you know, certainly in a pre internet, pre social media world, we could really be in awe of people and just and be in awe of them for their talents and the work that they have done and not know anything else about them. Yeah. And you know, whether it's things are better or worse now depends on I guess how old you are and what your experiences have been. But you know, a friend of mine, at some point we were just kind of goofing off about a bunch of shit, and he was he was he's, you know, about ten years older than me, so he was playing in bands around Seattle when Nirvana was coming up, right, and you know, we were both fans of Nirvana, of course, but he had said something along the lines of, you know, I think people forget that, like, there were a lot of people in Seattle when Nirvana got big that were kind of more like those glue sniffers, those fucking guys. Those guys. No, not those guys, right, I mean there were haters, right, I mean, like, you know, there were people were hating on Nirvana or Pearl Jam or whatever it might have been when they got popular, right, But as a teenager, you know, and as a kid who's growing up on the other side of the water from Seattle, I was able to just be in awe of them and have no context of like, I'm not in a band that's also trying to make it at the same time as Nirvana. I'm not. We're not. I'm not an older person who like whose band kind of petered out, and I see these young kids coming along and nake it famous, and I'm jealous. I'm just in the perfect place to be to be a fan and to be in awe, you know, And I think that such an important part of being a fan of music is to have that period and try to hold on to as long as you can where you can just be a fan of people, and then also final point on it at forty six, now there are people that I grew up being in awe of that are in bands that were so formative for me that now I'm might be acquaintances with, might be friends with. But I always let them know that I'm a huge fan. Yeah, you know, I'm still asking them questions about that one record they made thirty years ago, like when you so you know, I know you guys recorded it here, but like what was then? What kind of what was the mic on the thing? And you know what kind of guitar you did? And you know, I think that I'm proud of still being a fan of stuff. You know, I still want to I still want to look at my favorite bands and my favorite records with wonder and have them hold some air of mystery. And if I have the ability to discuss the record or the songs with the people who made them, like I want them to know how much those things mean to me. Do you mind playing a few songs from Transplantcism? Yeah? Of course? What what what would you like to hear? Oh? Man, I get to pick. How about um? How about title and registration? Yeah, let's do that one. Yeah, that one. That one works well like in this format, glove compartment is an accurately everybody knows it. I'm proposing the swift orn early change, change behind its door. There's nothing to keep my fingers worn. All I find you southandeers from better size, before the glee of your tail lights fading, to find yourself a better life. I was searching for some legal talk. Man, is the rain beat down on the hoof when I stumbled upon picture as I try to fucke. That's how this idea, it's drilled into my head. It's too important. Stay the away in spand there is no blame. How I love did slowly thing Now that's fun. It's like it was in there at all. Here. I arrest disappointment and grab cool. I wine away a can night. There is no blame how I love did slowly faith. Now that it's gone, it's like it wasn't there at all here. I left disappointment and Regret, Cool Hide, Flying Away a Night All Night, when I'm Flying Away to Night. That was Ben Gibbert performing Death Cab for Cutie's Title and Registration. We're going to take a quick break and then come back with more of my conversation with Ben Gibbert. We're back with more from my interview with Ben Gibbert. We pick up our conversation talking about albums that were foundational for him. What are some of those records for you that are just like touchstones, you know, for me when I was in high school kind of finding music that would be kind of became my music. It was Something Vicious for Tomorrow, which was Three People. For those who might not know as a band that it was Doug Marsh, who now is known mostly for Built to Spill. It was a band that he was in before Built a Spill, or when he was doing kind of the early Built a Spill recordings, And that record made a huge impact on me because, you know, growing up in like the suburbs of Seattle, or I guess across the water from Seattle, I was of an age where everybody was starting to get into punk and hardcore and straight edge and stuff like that, and there were elements of that music that appealed to me, but I'd always been a lot more moved by pop music and melodic music, and so for me, hearing Something Vicious for Tomorrow, that was a record that was this kind of beautiful melding of like very aggressive, kind of an interesting guitar work, but was just really great pop songs like Superchunk was another huge band for me. I mean, records like on the Mouth and Foolish huge records for me. There was a lot going on in the Northwest at that point that I really you know, Tree People was from Boise, but like, you know, there's a band called Hazel from Portland and I was really I loved. There was a band called Pond from Portland that I really loved, and I found myself gravitating towards a lot of this music from the American ground that you know, I guess, I guess indie rock was the term was being used to a certain extent in the early nineties, but it was really just kind of like underground American music being made by people who came up on hardcore but that had abandoned it or had decided, like you know what, I want to make something a little bit more dynamic, or something a little bit more has a little bit more to say or whatever, yea. And so that was a lot of that music was that it was the kind of music that was really formative to me in high school because it when you're a young person, and again coming back to it, insecure, you you know, you feel you want to like cool things. You like what you like, but you also want those things to be cool, right, And I really did genuinely love these records, but it also kind of filled a place in my mind where I could be like, oh, and also it's kind of punk, so you know, but also, I mean, Teenage Fan Club is my favorite band. Then when I first heard Bandwagonesque when I was fifteen, you know, I was not I had not heard much of the source material or influence of that band. I hadn't heard Big Star or much from the Birds or or any other kind of seventies power pop stuff they're pulling from. But that record just felt so familiar to me, and it felt like it was this wonderful kind of extension of the music that was on in the house when I was a kid. But it was kind of like filtered through, kind of A. J. Mascus, you know, influence of kind of just like really kind of dirty guitars, and I wouldn't music was not aggressive by any such imagination, but it had like a had a grit to it that I, as a teenager, really appealed to me. It's funny that, like I guess with all those bands happening there, Grunge, right, Nirvana, mud Honey, like all those all those groups, and it's like coming of age in San Francisco and like sixty seven or something. So I kind of shocked that you were kind of did they'll gravitate more towards a softer, more pop sound. I mean, it's it's evident obviously, and I think if you listen to Deathcab records that you write pop songs. But it's just it's interesting that you gravitated more towards a softer, less aggressive sound, you know. Yeah, And I and to be clear, I loved all that stuff too. Like my first real show I ever saw was the Subpop Ultra Lanfest in ninety one or ninety two, like the mud Honey was headlining, and it was like Super Suckers and Seaweed. I love still love Seaweed Love Seaweed Earth Pond played, so I mean I was definitely into that music as well. And it wasn't as if I thought that Nirvana or Sound Garden or Pearl Jam or Alison Chains were like not cool. You know, I love those bands too, But I think what I found really appealing was that I could go to shows in Seattle at this small all ages venue called the Okay Hotel, which at the time in Seattle, there was this law in the books called the teen Dance Ordinance, which basically legislated that any venue over I believe two hundred to two hundred fifty capacity needed to have a million dollars insurance policy. So that basically meant if you wanted to see an all ages show in Seattle is either going to be at a very small place or it was going to be at the arena those are the two or a theater, right, So so many bands came through and would play clubs because we as miners, were not allowed in there. So I spent so much of my time as a kid going too the Okay Hotel to see a lot of these bands that you know I've been talking about, And what made a huge impression on me was that you'd see them set their gear up on stage, then play the show, then break the gear down, then go to the merch table and sell their records and T shirts. And then you'd see them get load the gear into the van and drive away. And it might sound a little trite to have to consider that a you know, a mind blowing thing to see. But I'm a product of the eighties and MTV, and if you didn't live in a big city or you didn't have access to a college radio station, I legitimately thought when I was twelve or thirteen years old that the only way to be in a band would be if you could play like ripping guitar solos and look like you were in slaughter or something, right. I mean that was because that was what was on TV. You're just seeing it. You're like, Okay, well I don't look like that. I don't play like that. I'll never play like that. I don't actually like this music. I guess I can't do it, because if I can do it like that, it can't be done. But then you have this experience where you see people doing it themselves, real people, real people, and they just they they're they're not they're not changing into a costume to go on stage. They're wearing like jeans and a T shirt at the time, probably a flannel or a thrift store kind of shirt or whatever. And what seemed entirely unobtainable immediately snaps into focus is something that is like, yeah, I could do that, I could do that. That could be me. Do you ever do postal service songs in your solo shows? Oh yeah, all the time? Yeah yeah yeah. I mean you wrote the words and you wrote to the track, but because you didn't like craft the track and you weren't like you didn't write the chords or anything. I mean, is it was it weird when you first transposed it from the record to like a guitar to do a solo You know, some of them work better than others. But you know, at the end of the day, there's no way to say this out sounding self aggrandizing. So forgive me m but I can you think you've written a good to a great song or whatever. If you can play it on a piano or a guitar or a single instrument with a voice can still kind of convey that kind of emotion and power, then you know you might really have something. But that's also a function of maybe how records were made in the past and not so much how records are made today. I mean, there are or it's a sign that there's less good songs today. I mean, that's you know, I don't know, I I you know, I'm not I'm not gonna be the one to say that, but I do think that the tool box that young people are using to make music today maybe does not lend itself as often to picking up an acoustic guitar and playing a song that has been created in this kind of in a computer with a lot of interesting kind of tricks and not tricks, but just production techniques that are don't lend themselves well to playing a song on acoustic guitar, like you know, like there's a band called hunter Gex that I think is fucking fascinating. I think the really interesting and I like a lot of their songs, um but not many of their songs, And you know this isn't then as a slight. Not many of their songs that I've heard feel like they could be you know, I'm not expecting that, you know, an acoustic set coming from that, you know, it's not I mean, I guess when I say there's no good songs, and it's not that it's not necessarily the music is bad. I think there's plenty of great music now, but I think even some of the great a lot of the great music I hear, they're not great songs. And I don't I think that's fine. It's just just kind of is what it is. It's just like how a lot of the great music I hear now doesn't have like a guitar solo. It's just it's just I don't know. To me, it's almost such just like a fact. It's like, well, this isn't a song, but it's great. I love it. You know, it's cool. Well, and I think also what constitutes the song has changed dramatically since over the years, right, and again I'm I'm doing my best not sound like back in my day, but you know, no, not all it's it's it's it's really interesting that, you know a lot of songs that are very popular these days are like under two minutes long. Yeah, and they might just be like a verse and a chorus and maybe a verse and maybe another chorus and then we're done. Yeah. And then on the other if you have like good vibrations, right, or something that's just like unbelievably sophisticated and complicated with multiple changes. I mean recently, I was we were on tour and I picked up a copy of Seeds of Love by Tears for Fears, and which is you know, I'd love Tears for Fear as love that record, but you put on you know, Sewing the Seeds of Love and you're like, holy shit, this is a fucking complicated song man. There's like bridges after bridges, key changes, modulations. I mean, it is it's they they spared no expense on that, right. I mean, but a good song is a good song if it's you know, great song is a minute long that just punches you right in the face, and then a great song can be twenty minute song cycle. You know, it's really just a matter of conveying emotion and telling a story. You know, yeah, yeah, do you have a different relationship to the postal service song? So they feel holy like yourself, like I know, like in Death Cabure saying you felt very much like the songwriter. And so I imagine those field like like the way gen are Paul there, George their their beatles songs like those are their songs. But like you feel that way about the Postal super songs, do they feel different? They are, you know, legally and spiritually, both Jimmy and My and my songs. But I've been playing some of them for so long. I've played a lot of these songs more on acoustic guitar than I have with Jimmy. Yeah, so a lot of a lot of the versions of these songs have become they've taken on a life of their own in this kind of stripped down format. I think at some point in the No Direction Home, I think the Bob Dylan documentary, he says something along the lines of, you know, yeah, the best versions of my songs were never recorded. Yeah, you know, you go into a studio and you make a you know, you record like a rolling stone, and you know, that's just like he probably wrote that the week before. And they went in with a guy who had never played Oregon on a record before, right, and they just and they knock it out in a couple of takes, and like, all right, that is the definitive version of like a you know, like a rolling stone. That's what it is from from now until the end of time. And but as a performer, as a touring musicians, as pertains to our songs. I'm sure Dylan probably feels the same way, because he literally said it. We've gotten a lot better at playing all of these songs because we've played them hundreds, if not thousands of times, and there's little kind of variations and little tweaks of kind of kind of like bubbled up over the years, you know. So I'm very much a firm believer in that notion. Yeah, the best versions of anything I've ever recorded has not been recorded. I like that. It's like, you know, the best version of an acoustic pulsiver song probably existed somewhere a solo shows somewhere in the world, and maybe, you know, these days everything seems to be recorded in some capacity, but maybe it maybe it happened in two thousand seven, right before the iPhone came out or something, you know, Yeah, or maybe it's one hundred and one could be. I mean, yeah, I mean I think when we heard when we heard Iron Wine's version of such Heights, were kind of like, well, I guess that's how I'm playing that now, you know. I mean, it's just it's like there's that uh, I don't know if you might be too young to remember this bit, but there was like an old SNL bit with Eddie Murphy playing Buckwheat and he's like singing all these songs and the whole thing is like Buckwheat has a record of him doing standards, you know, And at some point the announcer says something long lines of like, you know, when Buck Wheat sings a song, it's eternally his, you know. And I feel that way about Sam Beam. You know, when when Sam Beam decides to sing a song, it kind of becomes eternally his. It's like, now, such great heights, you know, belongs to Sam Beam, at least spiritually. At this point. It's a really good version, you know. Yeah, it's so good version that era of music. I felt special having heard the Postal Service record in what, in my mind what I considered early and then by the time that record starts blowing up, he started to feel like, whoa like, but this was this was my music, this is my group. But you know, there was because I think in that time and a little later, people were starving for like kind of real people that could connect to. There was also the sense of like you wanted to keep things small and for yourself, and sometimes that that could be I guess you know, in hindsight, I'm sure that was limiting both the fans and the artists. But was it weird for you when when the postal service record took off the way that it did. Oh? Of course absolutely. I mean, do you feel like I can speak from experience because you know, I was also once a young person getting into music, right, I think when you're young, you're kind of figuring, you're finding out who you are, You're kind of creating your identity. We haven't really done a lot of stuff yet, right, So how we define ourselves tends tends to be through the things that we like. So if you like something super obscure, that telegraphs to somebody that you are a very interesting person because I'm the only one who likes this really obscure thing that not a lot of people know about. But then when the captain of the football team is like singing Nirvana songs, suddenly, suddenly you know, the definition of your individuality through being a Nirvana fan doesn't seem that unique anymore. Right. Yeah, As I've gotten older, I've been really able to parse that out. For myself, and it's been interesting to see how that phenomenon kind of works, how it exists in people, right Yeah. But you know, never connected though that it was related to that we haven't had many experiences. I mean, it's it's obvious to everyone that that's how we define ourselves by the things we're into at that age, but I really never connected it to that. It's like, you can't define yourself by your job at that age, or yeah, you have no job, You're you're going to high school, and so you know, you haven't probably written anything, or built anything, or done anything or gone anywhere. So you know, so much of our identity, certainly when we're into the arts or music, tend to revolve around the things that we like. Yeah, and the more obscure those things are, the more interesting we are as people. Right. Yeah. And but you know, to kind of come back around to the response to give up when I believe when subpop was kind of making its calculations as to how many records, you know, the projections on what we thought this thing could sell or what they thought it could sell. I think at that point, Deathcab's biggest record had sold fifty thousand copies. Or something like that would have been the photo album. And you know, Jimmy's Records had done what they had done. I don't know what they had done, and I think they had determined, you know, between we'll be we'll be in really great shape if we sell between like fifteen and twenty thousand copies, because that's like slightly less than half the Deathcab record. And you know, this seems like this might be a good, good kind of goal. And you know, we we went out in the spring of two thousand and three and did a five week tour of the States, playing too you know, not many people. You know, when we would get to New York, we were playing one Bowery Baller and then now we're playing two. That's exciting. And the La Show got moved from I think the Smell and then it eventually ended up at the Palace later on Vine. Yeah. So you know, by the time the tours ending, things were starting to pick up, and it felt like the record was starting to have legs, but there was no kind of sense that it would kind of take off the way that it did. And what is still so interesting to me about that record is that, you know, subpop was trying to promote it, but they weren't. You know, it wasn't getting played on the radio. It wasn't we didn't have like a video and rotation and MTV. It was kind of like the record was kind of selling itself. What was the promotional effort around that, because I don't really remember one until I guess a video gets made and that video was made a couple of years later. Yeah, I mean, you know it was. It kind of got sent through the pretty standard subpop promotional machine, which was, you know, we'll get our publicists on trying to get interviews and try to get college rated to'll play it for a couple of months, and then we'll move on to whatever the next record is. Yeah, and it really became the record just took on a life of its own to the extent where Jimmy and I might be the authors of the record and Subpop might have been the label, but it just kind of it just had this incredibly organic word of mouth vibe to it where I don't want to like undersell the work that Subpop did on Our Behalf, But it wasn't as if Subpop was spending a ton of money to let people know the record exists, but thinking it was going to be the next Deathcab record, right, which is probably why they assumed less than the fifty thousand that photo album. Right, It's like yeah, just like yeah, it'll be yeah. I mean, people will be interested in this if they're fans of Deathcab. But it's when you're when a singer from a band puts out a solo record, like nobody expects the solo record to be you know, Dave Girl puts out a solo record, nobody's expecting it to do as well as a food record. Yeah, right, So yeah, so we just kind of and we kind of we wrapped up that tour. We kind of thought, well, that's that. That was fun, and then we just get these calls from Tony at Subpop like, hey, the record is sold fifty thousand copies, Hey the records eighty thousand copies. Guys, we just want over one hundred thousand copies. We're a two hundred thousand copies. It just it just snowballed, And to this day, I don't I don't have I don't have a good explanation as to why that happened, aside from the fact that we obviously thought the record was good. It was really good. But there's a lot of great music in the world that doesn't sell a million conferencely good, I mean, and that's kind of what I was trying to get at the top, is like people had made of course people would. I mean, there's nine inch Nails, right, Like, he's right, he's a songwriter, and he does it in the kind of an electronic idiom, and there's a human league to all that. But it's like, I don't know, it's so into this day. It doesn't sound the record doesn't sound dated. And there's like radio add records that sound dated to me at this point, you know, and you listen to that, you're like, oh my god, Like it's still there's something about it that is exceptionally well crafted. And say with translanticism too, which I revisited recently, and I think it has to do with the songwriting and the production both. Yeah, I appreciate you saying that. I mean, I have had exceptional timing in my career and I don't know who to thank for that, you know, I think that it's you know, it's been said a million times that if you could kind of if you could manufacture a hit, That's all we would have, right, But you know, I don't know. I feel like, certainly myself in relation to both trans Atlanticism and give Up, I feel confident in my abilities as a songwriter. I feel confident and proud of my collaborators, and I think the things we made were really good. But you know, there were a lot of records coming out in that same timeframe. You know that we're as good, if not better. And you know, I'm not saying this to be overly self effacing. I'm just saying like, we just found ourselves making. We had these two records come out that, for whatever series of reasons, really hit in the culture, and we were there and able to capitalize on it and be out on tour and be promoting the records. And you know, what was also happening at that time was this massive cultural shift where indie rock went from being this underground medium to being I would I would never say so much mainstream, but certainly like larger and that it had ever been, you know, and certainly kind of started to kind of like you know, it was the strength. Sure. Yeah, And in a similar way that you know, quote unquote alternative broken in the mainstream post Nirvana, where there are bands that bands are playing theaters that a couple of years ago, we're just playing clubs, right, So I think that we were also Both records were kind of spurred on by this larger kind of cultural shift, you know. I mean there's that famous Sonic Youth documentary nineteen ninety one, the Year that Punk Broke, Yeah, which was a very apt title in hindsight, and I feel like a similar piece could be made about two thousand and four. Yeah, And that like two thousand and four was the year the indie rock broke, Like it went from being this underground thing to like a year or two later, it's like the Killers are every year or whatever. And Arcade Fire yea Arcade Fire and the Shins and and you know, it's like bands that if they had come out five years earlier, we'd been playing basements and small clubs are now headlining Lallapalooza. Yeah yeah, yeah, really crazy, really insane time. What did the guys from Death Cab What was their reaction to both the music of the Service and also the success of Give Up? Was it tough? Everyone was very supportive while I was making the record, and you know, Chris actually plays plays some piano and on the record on give Up, Chris played piano on the song nothing Better, and he helped record some of the guitars and vocals and stuff, so he was kind of helping me make make some of the record. I did some of it at my little home studio, but Chris was integral and helping make the record. And you know, Deathcab had come off a pretty grueling period of touring between We Have the Facts and Revoting Yes and Photo album, and it was a real grind and we had, you know, almost broken up, and thankfully kind of pulled back from the edge of the cliff and said, like, we need to take some time off, like we need we need to take some time away from this. It was that time away, which ended up being eight or nine months, that allowed me to really kind of wander creatively and write songs for both Transplanticism and do this project with Jimmy. So everybody in the band was really supportive of it, and when it came out, you know, everybody was cool with it. I think there was a very awkward period between when give Up eclipsed the sales of the photo album, Yeah, and when Transatlanticism came out. You know, I started Deathcap for Cutie. This was my band. It started as a solo project. So you know, I didn't think that anybody in the band needed reassurance that I wasn't going to like jump ship to this new thing that because it was starting to blow up. I mean that that never crossed my mind. But you know, there was a little bit of awkwardness when all of a sudden, you know, I'm sitting on a side project that has sold two hundred fifty thousand copies or whatever, and you know, we're just about to put trans Atlanticism out, and there's this kind of like and it wasn't happening a lot, but it was starting to happen a little bit where people would come to our shows and they'd be screaming for puls over songs. They didn't understand the distinction. They didn't get that we weren't just going to go into a service song. Yeah, and so you know, there was a period of time in which I think some of you know, there were some bruised egos in the band around understandably, I mean I think that understandably, of course. I mean, you know, it's like we as Deathcab had joked about selling fifty thousand records being indie rock gold right like we were. We were a huge band in quotes like and we were as big as you could be, you know, and then to find out that not only was there another level, but then I was experiencing that other level with my side project. You know, there was some awkward moments there. But back to timing. You know, if we would have put out photo Album in two thousand and three instead of trans Atlanticism, Deathcab would not have become what it became, right and the profile of the band would not have risen the way it did after trans Atlanticism came out. So we just were very fortunate to be putting out you know what. I think a lot of people would consider to this day our best record as the as a follow up of sorts to give up. Earlier, you were talking about how like before you were a verse in a way to like faster songs like kind of this kind of slow malaise kind of a would become known as kind of like a shoegazy thing maybe, But you know, trans alanticism, I don't know how much of that is down to also getting a new drummer around that time. Yeah, I feel like um mccar added a lot to that record. Was one feeding the other in a way in terms of the just a production, do you think I'm not I wouldn't say that. You know, there might be some similarities in the some slight similarities just because of my voice and how I kind of stack vocals and stuff like that. But Chris was very much doing his own thing with trans Atlanticism, and you know, give Up was was like a Jimmy and Ben production. So we were just kind of doing it ourselves, having never really produced a record before, just kind of flying by the seat of my pants. Yeah. But you know, I think when when Jason joined the band, I think we all we had tried to get Jason to join the band, I believe two previous times. Our first drummer, Nathan Good, who is a phenomenal drummer. And you know, when we first started the band and had Nathan playing drums, I was convinced that I'd never like this. It was like your first love, right, Like this guy plays, he hits so hard and the parts he rights are so cool, and like this guy's great. But you know, we just found ourselves in a position where we were driving around playing to nobody, making no money, and he was just out of college and you know, he's wanted to get married and kind of get a job. And I think there might have been a little familial pressure there as well, because I mean, look at us, were these four idiots in a van driving around stinky, you know, making no money. Why would there be a future in that? And I can see that now, you know as an adult. You know, if you were outside of this culture, you wouldn't see that and go like, no, that's a that's a dead end anybody. Yeah. Yeah. So when Nathan quit, we had this gentleman named Michael Shore joined the band, and he was a phenomenal drummer, great drummer, great dude, but him, he and Chris really kind of butted heads in the studio. They didn't play well together in that in that capacity. So when Jason joined the band, it really felt like we you know, and I just might I don't mean this as a slight to Michael or Nathan, but it really felt like we really had we really had somebody that was like on board all the way yea. And for me, as someone who fancies himself at least a little bit of a drummer. I was writing a lot of parts, a lot of drum parts, especially in the early records, and you know, Jason is one of the greatest rummers I've ever heard. But he also would have no issue with oh, yeah, that is how you want the drums. Okay, well I'll play like that. Yeah. But he'd also be like, but I could also do it like this, and I was like, oh, that's cool, or like, no, I think I like it like this, Okay, I'll do it like that. So he was very malleable, and he was very opinionated, but without ever being overbearing, Like you know, when Jason had a strong Jason wouldn't just Jason's not the kind of guy who will just chime in with every opinion that he has, but if he feels strongly about something, he will voice that opinion. And for the first time in a long time, I would see when he was pushing back on something that Chris was trying to have him do. I would see Chris really focusing and really listening to Jason and be like, Okay, let's do it that way. And that was that was a new experience for us, primarily because Michael and Chris had, but it heads so much there there's so much adversarial kind of moments in the studio that it was difficult to parse out who was being unreasonable. It was just they weren't They just weren't agreeing. So once we had Jason, it was like there was no audition. We were just like, all right, let's let's just get in and start working on these songs. You had the demos for the translanticism, some of them at least before yeah, before yeah, okay, yeah, and we just immediately jumped in the studio and started experimenting and playing around with the songs, and in this case with a drummer who was more than willing to like you know, nil pert all over the song or to just sit out and not play at all. Yeah, there was you know, he didn't have any ego about his I mean, we all have an ego about our playing, but he had very very little ego about his playing in relation to what what it did in the song. He just wanted the songs to shine. And it's not to say that Nathan nor Michael didn't want that either, but I think that mcgurr was very he was very confident in who he was and his abilities and felt comfortable saying like, all right, cool, I'll sit out in this one, yeah, or you get behind the kit, show me what you want me to play. Yeah, Like it was very cool about it feels like as much as this, like you were hitting your stride as a songwriter at that point, and maybe Chris was hitting his stride as a as a producer at that point. It definitely felt like you two were kind of peeking or kind of finally coming into your own at that point in your respective voice. And then like this new drummer comes in with his energy and it really helped create the sound that is Death Cab in a way, you know, which is weird to say, because I came into Death Cab like photo album smattering of stuff from like we have the facts of voting, yes, but like when you remember when I heard Translanticism, was like holy shit, like you wanted to listen to it. It felt like a whole experience from front to back. Same with give Up. Well, yeah, I definitely think that. You know, I've gone on record a number of times saying that while I think there's some great songs in the Photo album, it's it's one of my least favorite albums that we've made, primarily because of the climate in which we were making it. I didn't think we had enough songs, but we had to make a record because we had to be on the road. We weren't getting along, and you know, transatlanticism and give up as well. But certainly trans Atlanticism is the sound of for people who are all on the same page, enjoying each other's company, getting along all the with a common goal. I'm sure there, of course, are wonderful, amazing, genre defining records that were made under duress or with addicts or people fistfighting in the studio or whatever like. But it's been my experience that, at least for me, the best stuff that I've ever been involved with has been the product of free and easy communication, love and respect and the focus on a common goal and trans atlanticism and give up for that matter. But again, very much trans Atlanticism is a product of that. It's it's a record made out of with love and respect we all and you know, we would make records, We have made records since then that we're not necessarily made under those circumstances. But you know, I think it was getting close to breaking up and then pulling back and being like, no, we all love each other, we really want to do this. We're just a bunch of dipshits in our mid twenties who don't know how to communicate with each other. Yeah, let's kind of let's take a step back and take some time away and then come back at this and you know, do the best we can. We're gonna take one last break and then come back with more from Ben Gibbert. Before we hear the rest of my conversation with Ben Gibbert, let's hear them play Death Cabs song Tiny Vessels. This is the moment that you know that you told her that you loved to buch your zone, You touch your skin, and then you think, but she's beautiful, but she don't need a thing to me. Yeah, she is beautiful, but she don't need a thing. I spent two weeks and silver La, the California son cascading down my face. There was a girl light Brown Street and she was beautiful, but she didn't need a thing to me. Yeah, she was beautiful, but she didn't need a thing to me. I wanted Silverlieve and all ones that I was speaking as we moved together the tart, all the friends that I was telling, all the playful misspellings, and every flight I gave it left when signy that so zooms didn't hear neck conform the bruises that she said you did want to say, but they ten And so that day while I see a dark gray clouds in the distance, smoothing closer with every hour. So when you do something wrong, I think, your damn right, there is but we can't talk about it now. No, we can't talk about it now. So one last time, then you'll go and we'll pret send that it meant something so much more. But it was vile and it was cheap. And you are beautiful, but your tone mean a thing to me. Yeah, you are beautiful, but your tone mean a thing. Yeah you are beautiful, but you tell me and a thing me. It's a beautiful song. Thank you. And there's a level of that song that's biographical. You were living in Silver Lake at some point during the writing of that record, right, the story takes place kind of bringing around to give up. I was down in Silver Lake working on the Post Service record at Jimmy's house, so I'd been seeing this woman for a period of time who I had I had been obsessed with for a long time, and we were finally dating and we just we just kind of weren't good together, just didn't work. And yet, you know, I kind of internalized a lot of the failures of the relationship on my inability to see from a very early point that we were not compatible because I was completely I was what's the word. It was somebody that I had been just I had lusted over for so long, and then you kind of realize that, like sex with beautiful people is a lot of fun, but it's not without at least for me, it's certainly at that time my life in this particular relationship, without a really kind of strong connection, it started to feel very empty, and it started to feel as if I was in it for the wrong reasons. And when the person who is the subject of the song first heard it, they were really upset. Understandably, what I hope comes through in the song is not so much that it's not an indictment of the person that I'm singing to. It's an indictment of myself and to me, And the real kind of chore of the song is in the bridge where it's like I wanted to believe in all the words I was speaking. I wanted to like, you know, I was I was over committing. I was trying to convince myself that I had stronger feelings, that this was more than what it was, which was just an extension of my desire for this person, physical desire, rather than a sense of connection away from that, you know, And you know, years later we have we're on very good terms, we're friends. It's fine. I wrote a lot of songs about her. In fact, you know, the songs Such Great Heights is about her as well. Really so yeah, so you know, she she kind of she exists throughout these records in a very interesting way. Same with Lightness. The song Lightness is about her as well. So there's kind of a there's an interesting kind of arc between these records about this person where in a song like Lightness, it's this like it's the desire, it's the yearning, and then Such Great Heights is the culmination of like all the feelings, and then Tiny Vessels is the letdown, you know, it's it's the realization that oh I never actually felt this way. I just got swept up, you know, and twenty years later, she must feel pretty flattered in a way or beat. You know, I would feel that way, you know, I mean if you go to song, I mean we're friends. We're friends now, so it's yeah, I mean I think that, you know, like any as as a lot of things. You know. It's like so funny. We were just talking a couple of days ago, and we were both commenting about what dipshits we were when we were twenty five, you know, really and like live things. Yeah, like we're so I think I'm a lot better person at forty six than I was at twenty five. You know, Um, is it hard like a song like that now? Like I don't know. I mean, you're gonna go on a tour. I don't know if you'll play that song or not. Hopefully you do. It's great. I want to hear it. Oh of course. Yeah. Well we're yeah, we well the tour that we're doing in the fall with these records were, um, you know we're playing them start to finish. You're gonna play I didn't realize you're gonna play both start to finish. Yeah that's the plan. Yeah, So yeah, so it starts, it's the show will be Estens will be like trans Lticism, Start to finish, short break, give up, start to finish. That's going to be a great experience. You know. It's kind of a product of I think these this kind of format as a product of a streaming era in that I don't remember who was the first one to do these shows. I believe it was some promoters in England like fifteen years ago that started doing these, like invited a band to play their assemble album and it's kind of yea, yeah, I've kind of taken off and from a you know, you know, a concertgoers perspective, it's really kind of a nice EXPI to go and pretty much know what you're gonna get. Yeah, you know. I mean obviously, sometimes you go see a band and you're with your friends and like, I hope they played that song from the third record. You know, we've all done that, right, And sometimes like they played everything I wanted them to hear, or like they didn't play fucking anything I wanted to hear those guys, right, Yeah, but in this case, you know, if what you're looking for is hearing these records, you will want you will hopefully not go home disappointed. So yeah, we'll definitely be playing that one. I mean, a song like that that's obviously highly personal, and you it's it's so biographical. Is it hard to access the motion of it again? Is it almost too easy and you try not to? Or how do you perform it in a way that honors the song but without almost going back to that place you were twenty years ago writing it? I guess I wrote I wrote Tiny Vessels when I was twenty six. I think I'm forty six now, so it's been twenty years since I wrote the song. And you know, there's a part of me that has to exist in that headspace for the three or four minutes that we're playing that song. But it's not it's not the extent of like have you seen walk Hard the Dewey Cox story, where it's like, you know, Dewey has to you know, he's sitting in a corner by himself and somebody's like, don't bother me. He has to relive every moment of his life before he goes on stage. You know, it's not it's not quite that dramatic. But I do find that when I'm performing a song, I do try to place myself back in reconnecting with the imagery that made me want to write that song in the first place. So it's like, it's as if, you know, it's kind of a slightly pretentious thing to call songs like little movies, but there is, there's a collection of imagery that was in my mind when I wrote that song, and I find myself accessing that again. I don't place I don't place the narrative in my mind in a contemporary context or in my life now. So it can be a little bit of of a head fuck to it, certainly with a lot of my songs, be kind of reintroducing yourself to all of your failings every night. But at the same time, I think it's also a really wonderful way to gain perspective on where you're in your life today. Yeah. I play a song I wrote when I was twenty, and the lyrics are by a twenty year old. That's not to say that they're good or bad, but that's just who they were written by. And there are very few things, thankfully, that resonate in that song that I wrote when I was twenty with my forty six year old self. You know, I'm an emotionally hopefully slightly developed person at least since then. So, yeah, I do find my I do place myself in the song. I remember who the songs were about. I kind of pay I have to honor the honor them for giving me the song by kind of thinking about them. I'm performing them. You know, you mentioned the imagery involved in writing a song. The songs particular and translanticism, I feel are so and it was one of the things that struck me from the very first time hearing it. They are really visual, like I mean, just even that theme, tiny vessels and the and the bruise and the leaves, and then it goes you know, it's like a title and registration, same thing. And I noticed with title and registration, though on the demo version the lyrics were a little different. The album version was much more leaned into the imagery of the glove compartment. Going for the documentation. There's a lot of beautiful imagery in that record, and I love the way that it's it's it's all weave together, all kind of wraps up. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think the first three records be it not by design, but just by default. I think the lyrics ended up being a little bit more obtuse and a little bit more like STIPI in than uh, you know, than Gabbardian in the sense where I was I was writing these I think when you like kind of when I call through the lyrics of the first three records, you know, there are there are some songs that are kind of relatively straight narratives. If there's a lot of songs that are kind of they're they're a more obtuse, a little more impressionistic. And I think by the time I was writing stuff for trans Atlanticism, I started to really lean into this idea of I want people to hear the song one time and be able to see it, yeah, to see something yeah, rather than like, you know, like I was, I was listening to like RIM's Reckoning not that long ago, and which is Ad' been listening to for thirty five years or whatever, and I still went, what the fun if he's talking about a lot of the songs, right, you know, and I haven't and I've never actually delved into the lyrics and tried to decipher them, you know. But then again, you put on songs amount of time and you're right there, you're like, oh, it's you put on losing my religion or low or any of the songs, and you're just like, wow, yeah, no, I get it. I'm here, like you know, Me and Honey a fucking amazing song. And you know, I wouldn't say that the lyrics got better for myself or for Michael Stipe as much as you know, the obtuseness, the abstractness started to kind of become a little bit more literal and a little bit more observational. And so I guess when I'm writing a song now, or or certainly around trans Atlanticism, you know, the idea would be you listen to it once you understand what the songs about, But there are turns of phrase that you go like, well, what did you just say? That was fucking cool. I like that. But I think on some of the earlier records there are so many kind of obscure turns of phrases that in the less effective moments, it's kind of a word salad. It's a much more eloquent way of saying what I was trying to say. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it's it's like that. But that's kind of the idea, right, you want to kind of like I the hope is not to tip too far into bland writing, you know, where you're just kind of writing I'm happy, I'm sad this thing happened. Yeah. So that the goal is to kind of virtually everything I've written since has been like I want people to build, to put it on, and they hear it once and they get it, but then there's things to go back to and kind of be like, well, what did you say there? Yeah? I like that. Yeah, And you know, sometimes I pull it off, sometimes I don't. Yeah, it's incredible. I don't want to keep you too long. Can we do a postal server song? And yeah? For sure? Yeah, I got I think I know which one will be good here. I'll be the grapes ferments is bottled and served, the table set and my finess like a perfect chance. I'll be the fire escape that's bolted to the ancient brick where you will sit and contemplate with day. I'll be the water wings that save you if you start drowning and then open tad and your judgments. I'll be the phonograph that plays your favorite albums back as your eye fifty off to sleep. I'll be the platform shoes undo what heredity stuns to you. You'll have to strength to look into my eyes. I'll be your winter color buttons it straight to the throat with the car to you won't catch cold. I want to take you far from the cynics in this town and kiss you arm about. We'll cut our bodies free from the sethers of this scene, start a brand new colony where everything will change. We'll give ourselves new name, I Dad, He's or hate the sun, heat, the crime under our bare feet in this brand new colony, s brand new colony, and free thing will change. Very thing will change, the free thing will change. That was really beautiful, Thanks man, thank you. It occurred to me listening to that brought up ArKade Fire earlier, and not for nothing. I mean, I feel like give up translanticism. A year later, Arcade Fire's Funeral kind of felt like indie rock growing up finally in a weird way. You know. It's like like to your point of like it sort of started to permeate into popular culture at that time. Like the songwriting on these two records are incredible, and what a great time for music. Yeah, I mean, you know, I obviously being a part of it. You know, it's in my vest interest to kind of take that position as well. But yeah, you know, it just felt like none of us would have had the careers we have had, or the popularity of success that we had without all of the artists that kind of laid the groundwork for us in the nineties and even before that. You know. So there's a lot of bands that you know, we talked about earlier. I grew up with it. You know, I felt to this day still deserve more lip service, you know, but I suppose that sometimes sometimes is the blessing and the curse of being, you know, a cult influence. You know, it's fair enough, but you know, I'm sure I don't know. I mean, it feels like a decade by decade, so many cult influences are kind of getting their due, and um, I'm sure, I'm sure it'll it'll get there at some point. Yeah. Well, you see the works that Numeros doing on behalf of you know, a lot of a lot of bands music, a lot it's coming from like stuff, you know, from like the stuff like Numeros putting out or whatever. You're like, like Jesus, Yeah, they're doing a phenomenal job. And there's a band called Rex that was really influential and important to me. Uh and Numero you know there there was one a couple of their records that were not available on vinyl, and then Low and Behold coming out in Numeros, So I like pre ordered that shit immediately. I was like, gotta have that. Our our friends in this band called the American Analog Set, who are from Austin, Numeros doing a rereleasing their first three records, which were wonderful albums. So yeah, I mean, it's it's it's really it's it's really kind of heartening to see a lot of this music kind of have a second life. And it's also been just incredibly interesting to see what stuff has kind of been hitting in the culture in a way that I never would have imagined it doing. I mean, like, you know, I love Unwound. I think they're really important to me. I never in a million years thought that Unwound would be a popular band in twenty twenty three. I think that's fucking awesome. It's amazing, you know, but it's it's a testament to like, yeah, you make great shit. It might not hit like in the in it might be before it's time. You know there. You know, a lot of this music, a lot of this book's film culture, whatever is being kind of is resurfacing and finding a new audience. And I think that's just one with you, man. My biggest fear isn't dying. My biggest fear is dying before like my next favorite record gets you know, uncovered from the sixties or some shit, you know, yeah exactly. I'm still waiting for somebody to put out like a retrospective of this band called the Dovers like who that I loved in the sixties. So maybe I don't if it's good for Numero, but somebody, somebody out there listening to someone hears that they do it. Um speaking of an American Alexa too. I always always loved aversion Choired Vandals. It was on the the Oh Thank You at Home EP. You guys did yeah this guys. But we became friends of those guys. I think we met them at Southwest Southwest in ninety nine. It was the first band that we had become friends with outside of our immediate immediate circle in Seattle or Bellingham, and uh, you know, yeah, we we did some early touring with them, and you know, they are friends to this day. I literally saw, you know, I saw a couple of them in Austin and saw when we were in Berlin. One of the guys live in Berlin now, so we've we've maintained a friendship over the years. Yeah, they're wonderful people, great band. It's amazing. It's wild. It's wild to be in a place in my life now where I'm saying shit like now, you got to understand this was nineteen ninety eight. You know, we didn't have We're fucking I fault. You couldn't just dial off a whole Foods. You couldn't get Ubert or Eats to bring your food. You know. It's like I've been working with some younger artists. I'm working on music here and there, and it's like, you know, it's like, I think one of the the things that we were about getting older is that you're seeing the world through you know, in your mind, you look, your eyes are still like twenty five or whatever. You know, you're still like but then you're around people and you think like, I'm one of you, I'm a young person, and then you start talking at them and you see them glaze over and you're like, oh no, I'm like they're dead. Yeah. Yeah, like I'm talking about some I'm on some shit that like they have no fucking idea, and it's like why should they they don't. It's like they shouldn't know who Slint is. They don't. Why would they fucking go? You know, they got their own they got you know, they got their own bands. You know, they don't need our bands, you know, you know the fuck up things like I'm not even I'm thirty three, and so I should still feel a little young. But I think because I grew up for a fair amount of time, and maybe it's just because my family was poor. You know, we had the internet much later, and like we didn't even have like we didn't have cable and stuff. So like there was there was a bit of a fair amount of my life. It was like tethered to the real world. You know. I teach a college course and it's like it's a fuck, I'm I am a fucking dinosaur to these people. You know. Yeah, man, dude, I know the feeling. But you know what, like with age comes wisdom. You know. I don't know if anybody, if anybody wants it, but like yeah, it's it's it's been a true man, Ben Gibbert, Thank you so much, man. I appreciate you taking the time. It's I mean, and and thank you for the music most of all, more than anything. Oh, I really appreciate you having me on. I mean, I'm a fan of what you guys do on this pod, so it's it's nice to be a guest. Thanks to Ben Gibbert for playing live for us and going deep on his writing and album creation process. You can hear all of our favorite Ben Gibbert songs on my playlist at broken Record podcast dot com. You can subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. Broken Record is produced with help from Leah Rose, Jason Gambrell, Ben Taliday, Nisha Vencut, Jordan McMillan, and Eric Sander. Our editor is Sophie Crane. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription service that for his bonus content and uninterrupted ad free listening for only four ninety nine a month. 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