MOG

Note: as much as I wish I’d managed to take photos like this, I’m not that good and neither is the camera on my iPhone. So credit, thanks and much love goes to my sister, Caroline Madden, and her DSLR both of whom risked the wrath of Ambassador Theatre security to get these shots.

"Best. Gig. Ever."

Not my words. This is from the freakishly tall hipster twenty-something standing behind me, just before the encore. Somehow it’s not surprising that a Dublin show by Death Cab for Cutie would evoke this response – any other fans of the band I’d met before tonight were enthusiastic to the point of evangelism, and this is the first headline show in this country in the eleven years the boys have been together. If nothing else, rarity makes this show something to behold, but the honest truth is that it’s not the best gig ever. In fact it’s not even the best Death Cab gig I’ve ever seen.

I started the night with a pint of London Pride in the Porterhouse on Nassau Street – I’d met up with a friend of a friend to drop something off before the show. He was also going, so we had a chat about drummers, support acts, good gigs we’d seen before (let me say – that dude LOVES Interpol and Editors) and, of course, Death Cab. I’d seen them two years before in Brixton Academy in London; he’d seen them later that summer at the Oxegen festival. The boys rocked the house in London, it was approaching the end of a pretty successful tour to promote ‘Plans’, support act Viva Voce had received a rapturous reception and they seemed genuinely excited to be there.  At the time, on a long since defunct blog, I wrote this:

"I’d imagined [Ben Gibbard] as soft spoken, shy and a little overly earnest – maybe more from the Michael Stipe school of talking to the audience as little as possible, and mumbling when he does – but that’s not the case. Yes, he seems almost nervous. Yes, he seems like he’d rather sing than talk. But no, he is not the reluctant showman, cursing the day people started to remember his name. He seems genuinely thrilled when the audience recognises a song and starts singing it back to him, and even more thrilled just to get to play them for people."

By comparison, at Oxegen the band followed a relatively sedate performance by Irish songstress Gemma Hayes, and according to my opposite interlocutor went unrecognised and unacknowledged by a significant portion of the audience – by his account the show ended with drummer Jason McGerr jumping fifteen feet from a scaffold and Ben Gibbard being escorted from the stage. Later tonight Gibbard will refer to this as ‘an international incident.’

We chit-chat some more about local bands, in particular their drummers (for up until recently, he was drummer for DC Tempest, about whom I’ve written before) and compare experiences in the insurance industry (of which I’m an escapee) until my sister Caroline (who has provided photography for this report) shows up. Caroline and I hit Eddie Rockets on O’Connell Street for some pre-show garlic fries, and move on to the show.

After a little ticketing confusion is resolved, I buy a ‘Long Division’ Death Cab t-shirt and a couple of drinks. While we're here, my rule about buying concert t-shirts is that if I wouldn't wear it if it didn't have the name of a band I like on it, then I won't wear it. This rule, had it been adopted years ago, would have kept a pretty garish Bryan Adams t-shirt out of my wardrobe, but is the reason I still have a Semisonic t-shirt. Anyway...

Support band Frightened Rabbit are already on stage, and they’re infinitely better than had been reported to me. They sound like a more rocking version of Idlewild, although a lot of this is to do with the fact that they’re both Scottish. Either way, they’re holding my, and the crowd’s attention as a whole and they leave to more than just polite applause.

Looking around and the crowd is pretty much what you’d expect for a relatively hip band in a relatively hip venue (yes, I just said ‘hip’. Twice.) On a prettiness scale the girls fall somewhere between looking like USA Today’s Whitney Matheson (at the better end of the scale) and Ryan Adams (at the other end.) Conversely, Ryan Adams would be a good analogue for the more handsome dudes, and Chuck Klosterman comparable with the – let’s be honest – dorkier ones. (For the record, I’m not handsome enough to be confused with Ryan, or smart enough to be confused with Chuck. If you were there, I was the scruffy haired guy with the pint of Amstel who looked a little too old and conservatively dressed to be at a show like this.) As is usual with a crowd like this (late secondary school to young professional, but probably 80% of college age) the cool band and message t-shirts are in full force, as are the inexplicable wooly hats (it’s unseasonably warm out and we’re indoors – so please, WTF?) and as it’s ‘Movember’ some ironic and/or charity mustaches abound. The first time I was here it was still a cinema, it was Christmas Eve, and I saw ‘The Santa Clause’. The second time, I saw Tenacious D, when Jack Black was still ‘that fat funny guy’ and the last time I saw the Devlins, who nobody talks about nearly enough. In short, I’ve never had a bad time here, and I don’t expect tonight to be the exception.

Death Cab come out to surprisingly muted applause; a good portion of the audience is still surrounding the bar, or the t-shirt concession; or are just trying to pull off the whole ‘bored, detached hipster’ schtick (albeit not as well as the guy I saw with the book and iPod at a Decemberists show a couple of years back – he genuinely seemed annoyed that the band was interrupting his quiet time.) There’s little enthusiasm for ‘Employment Pages’ from ‘We Have The Facts And We’re Voting Yes’, and the relatively low key opening of ‘Your Heart Is An Empty Room’ and ‘The New Year’ don’t help matters much.

Gibbard, with shaggy hair, muttonchops and a plaid work shirt looks like Paul Schneider’s character in 'Elizabethtown', so much so that I wouldn’t be completely shocked to see My Morning Jacket joining him to play ‘Freebird’.  He introduces the band, talks about the new album and play on to... relative indifference. The band is giving their all, and there are plenty of people singing along and cheering every introduction, but you can’t help but feel that a few people here could care less.

Then something nigh on magical happens. Death Cab for Cutie appear to stop caring. It’s not to say they’re not performing well; they’re playing great. But the audience no longer seems an influence. Harmer is well and truly in the proverbial zone, spending, more time facing Jason McGerr’s drum kit than he does the audience (watch Justin Mitchell’s ‘Drive Well, Sleep Carefully’ this is not a rarity for Harmer). Chris Walla is engrossed in his guitar and Gibbard closes his eyes and belts out the songs with ardour and assurance. There’s a passion there that you’d hope to hear from any band, at any show, and it’s a shame that so many in the audience just don’t appreciate it. Yeah, the more recognisable songs from ‘Plans’ and ‘Transatlanticism’ get a singalong; but the guy who told the blonde girl at the bar that he had two of the band’s three albums was probably lost when they played ‘Title Track.’ The encore brings a crowd pleasing quartet that starts with ‘Brothers on a Hotel Bed’ with Walla on piano; and closes with a version of ‘Transatlanticism’ that gives me goosebumps and features McGerr drumming like he’s filling in for Animal with Doctor Teeth and the Electric Mayhem.

Walla tells us to take care of each other, and we file out, past the cloakroom and onto O’Connell Street, Caroline and I wondering aloud why so many folks were too self-involved to appreciate a good show anymore. At least that one person there thought they’d seen the best gig ever; and I’ll be honest – Death Cab for Cutie did not let me down. But so many people didn’t seem to care that by the time I’d sat down on the last train home all I could do was wish that more people had seen the band that Caroline, that guy and I had seen.

The setlist, in case you’re wondering:
Employment Pages
Your Heart Is An Empty Room
The New Year
Why You’d Want To Live Here
Crooked Teeth
No Sunlight
Grapevine Fires
Title Track
Soul Meets Body
I’ll Follow You Into The Dark
I Will Possess Your Heart
Cath
We Looked Like Giants
Long Division
The Sound of Settling
Marching Bands of Manhattan

Encore:
Brothers on a Hotel Bed
Title And Registration
Expo '86
Transatlanticism