Bed Gibbard sat down with Justin Richmond of the Broken Record podcast to discuss his career-defining albums, from his two different bands.
LISTEN NOW: Broken Record | Ben Gibbard
As many 2000’s Alt fans will know, The Postal Service was a supergroup side gig for Ben Gibbard, who was already reaching success with his band Death Cab for Cutie. Formed in 2001 with producer Jimmy Tamborello, Gibbard found that songwriting for Postal Service was “kind of relatively effortless and really fun” because another songwriter was involved. Though use to being the sole writer for Death Cab, Gibbard described that he and Tamborello were, “just kind of off and running” after their first song, “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.”
Therefore, having a co-writer on Postal Service gave Gibbard a natural workload balance between the two projects. “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,” he told the podcast host. This balance-between-bands even extended to the song’s themes and moods, as the different groups allowed Gibbard to explore his writing in new ways. “I never would have picked up a pen and wrote lyrics like I did for ‘Sleeping In,’ on top of anything I'd be writing for Death Cab myself,” Gibbard explained.
In order to keep songs entirely separate and avoid giving one band a better album, Gibbard revealed he would wait for producer Tamborello to write something before him. “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,” he explained. “For whatever reason, the tone of what Jimmy was sending me allowed each song to be its own separate thought that could exist away from Death Cab and not come into conflict creatively with what I was doing over here.”
Though Gibbard recalled that “everybody in the band was really supportive” of Postal Service, he also acknowledged that there was some “awkwardness” and understandably “bruised egos” in Death Cab for Cutie. “It was starting to happen a little bit where people would come to our shows and they'd be screaming for a Postal song,” Gibbard said, reflecting on any annoyance his bandmates may have felt. “The [fans] didn't understand the distinction. They didn't get that we weren't just going to go into a Postal Service song.”
Luckily for fans now, that distinction seems to be narrowing with their combined 20th anniversary tour this coming September. And while 20 years seems like a long time, Gibbard assured host Richmond that he’s still with it. “I'm not an older person who's band kind of petered out and I see these young kids coming along and they get famous and I'm jealous,” he joked. “I'm just in the perfect place to be a fan and to be in awe.”
Hear the full conversation with Ben Gibbard, which includes acoustic performances of songs “Title and Registration” “Tiny Vessels” and “Brand New Colony,” on his Broken Record podcast episode above, and on the free Audacy app.
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