Number 5 of 2003 — The Postal Service: Give Up

Serendip was the name of the country now known as Sri Lanka. It is also the root of the word serendipity coined by Horace Walpole in 1754 based around a fairy tale titled The Three Princes of Serendip. The relevance is here because, according to Mr Walpole, the princes were "always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of". It’s by serendipity that I discovered this album.

Give Up is the second collaboration between Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Dntel’s Jimmy Tamborello. Their first collaboration was for a track on the Dntel album Life is Full of Possibilities (which I must get sometime). If you know Dntel and Death Cab for Cutie you can guess the sound of the album. What we have here is a mix of synth-pop that veers towards Intelligent Dance Music territory (discombobulated breakbeat to you and me) and indie songwriting of the ilk found on Radiohead’s OK Computer. I discovered The Postal Service whilst grazing through the multitude of music channels on Sky Digital.

Named because of the way they worked on the album, contributing the music (Tamborello) and the vocals (Gibbard) individually and passing the working results between each other via air mail, The Postal Service have produced an album of understated beauty that demonstrates a high level of musical proficiency and cohesiveness which is lyrically accomplished (aside from one track) — although I didn’t really appreciate this until I saw the lyrics written down. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight launches the album with a tale of meeting an ex-partner in the context of their new relationship – "And I am finally seeing why I was the one worth leaving". It sets the tone for the rest of the album, low-fi synth basslines, electronic drums, lush hushed vocals, harmonies and occasional guitar licks. The single Such Great Heights has interesting lyrics with incredible imagery "I am thinking it’s a sign that the freckles / In our eyes are mirror images and when / we kiss they’re perfectly aligned / and I have to speculate that God himself / did make us into corresponding shapes like / puzzle pieces from the clay".

Things turn a bit iffy on Sleeping In, a song about the assassination of JFK with lyrics I daren’t repeat here, they’re pretty bad aside from the chorus. However, Nothing Better repairs the situation with a story predating the first on the album "Will someone please call a surgeon / who can crack my ribs and repair this broken heart / that you’re deserting for better company?". It’s essentially a bittersweet, sometime humorous duet between Ben Gibbard and Jen Wood (who I know nothing about apart from the fact she does indie folk music and, with Jenny Lewis, provides backing vocals on many of the tracks on this album).

Recycled Air ditches the personal introspection for the fear of flying. Clark Gable comes across like some French film shown on BBC4 "..I’ve been waiting since birth to find / a love that would look and sound like a movie". We will become Silhouettes is more serious, addressing the fallout of a nuclear accident, all arranged to a boppy happy children’s tune, with ba ba ba ba lyrics. The sub-pop feel of This Place is a Prison uses disturbed synthetic squelched loops rather like reined-in Aphex Twin tracks, adding live break beats towards the end. The romance exhibited in The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, Such Great Heights, Nothing Better and Clark Gable reappears for Brand New Colony, which reminds me lyrically of A Man Called Adam’s track Porcupine. The album closes with a furious demented instrumental Natural Anthem or so it appears. Lyrics do appear right at the end in a wrong-key for the musical accompaniment. But this all makes sense. The album is light and dark, dark and light, sweet and sour, and everything makes sense. Whether they’ll get together for another album remains to be seen, but this one is one huge happy accident.