Death Cab for Cutie

Death Cab for Cutie
Lupo's At the Strand, Providence Rhode Island
Saturday October 22, 2005

The one good thing about Lupo's is that is so very close. The downside is when it is a sold out show its SOLD out. Even the signs outside pretty much told would be hopefuls to forget it. Saturday shows there are great too because they start and end early. Hey call me old but I don't need to hang out spending money I don't have on booze. Heck I don't drink at shows anyhow. Okay this is not even a review...

A band from Montreal opened the show. They were called "stars" and they were fantastic I thought. The band was made up of 6 members and they were just really refreshing. I had read a review on pitchfork for their cd and it was very favorable. They did enough to impress me that I grabbed the cd on the way out.

Death Cab for Cutie came out about 8:45 and the band dove right in. It was a simple stage set up with main man Ben Gibbard way off to one side and the other guitar player Chris on the other. I do like the trend of putting the bass player almost center stage (Nick) to work with the drummer (Jason). Nick is fun to watch.

Death Cab were "indie darlings" for a lot of years and over the last few have garnered more attention due to a slot on the Fox Teen Drama "The OC". After all that the band fled the indie labels and went to Atlantic. The result was the mostly good record "plans" of which the band is currently on tour for. There was a pretty good amount of young college girls who did their best to hold back their shrieks. I saw the band open for Pearl Jam last fall and was very impressed. I had a buddy suggest them to me for a while and finally grabbed the John Byrd ep last fall after Pearl Jam. Glad I did.

I am a pretty new fan to the band so I don't know the full set and I was surprised that when Ben mentioned "this is an old song" the audience didn't really seem to care. It was odd.

All in all it was a decent show. It was beyond sold out as I mentioned so there was a lot of chatterboxes there and people that feel just cuz the band has been on stage for 45+ minutes it is still in their right to "move up" and push smaller people out of the way. I am over 6 feet tall (and a taper) so I try to stand a little back and I watched as these 2 women walked right up and tried to get on a railing in front of me. The people that had been there since before stars came on suddenly are crushed..makes no sense.

The band was tight and did a 90 minute set which was pretty nice. I expected about 60-70 minutes honestly so that was nice. Ben sweats more than I do so that was refreshing too.

I'd see them again.