| It
seems simple enough: a preprogrammed beat off of your drum machine,
add some ridiculously ‘80s synth sounds and some basic guitar
riffs, and top it off with some straight-from-the-gut lyrics about
your everyday feelings and viola, an album! But this is no everyday
album. This is the best album of the year, quite possibly of the
entire decade.
The Postal Service’s Give Up is the first full album collaborative
effort between two very active and up and coming artists. Ben Gibbard
of Death Cab For Cutie fame and Jimmy Tamborello from Dntel meshed
creative nerve cells with synapses of the United States’ mail
delivery system in this experimental project. For anyone unfamiliar
with the duo’s method for recording, think Pony Express.
The sound throughout the album is home to anyone who was alive during
the Eighties. This could have its drawbacks and risks being extremely
played out and clichéed, but the over-smooth music is balanced
out by Gibbard’s down to Earth vocals and his noticeably rock
style.
Jen Wood and Jenny Lewis also bring a bright compliment to Gibbard.
In addition the harsh static-like syncopated beats that splash throughout
the songs give the songs an edge that Ah-ha or the Human League
never had. This is definitely music of the Twenty First century.
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below)
The Postal Service's Give Up is the
best of the best |
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The album starts off with the most instantly approachable song,
“The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” which builds slowly
into a frenzied techno/rock wonder that makes you wonder how they
did that with your ear. You heard the song all along: keyboards,
beats and vocals, more of the same... soon you’re boppin’
your head and singing so loud that the people in the closed up car
next to you can hear, and the hair on the back of your neck stands
up.
How’d they do that?
The lyrics are impressively vivid and personal which is typical
of anything heard in Death Cab, but yet nothing from them has sounded
so good. Likewise, if you remove the vocals and lyrics from the
music, you are left with a waterless octopus (very limp). The two
units fit together like puzzle pieces and it’s hard to recall
what the pieces sounded like separated.
Each song has a distinct identity if all linked by the obvious techno
undertones. While some tell nice anecdotes (“Clark Gable”),
some are light and airy and not much besides (“We Will Become
Silhouettes”). While most are a gorgeous combination of synth
and vocals, a few get too ugly in the New Order way. Jen Wood’s
beautiful melodies in “Nothing Better”, are overshadowed
by the clanging, misplaced electronics.
The album is extremely consistent and as such the sound gets a bit
tiresome after 30 minutes, but a change in tempo (“Recycled
Air”) and some of the best melodies of the decade make each
minute of listening to the album a valuable one.
It’s hard to say to where this project will lead, but with
such busy artists (and this being the side project for both), it
might be well advised to leave well enough alone. But it is this
writer’s wish, along with hundreds of thousands, as well,
that they continue their experiment.
-plasma
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