If this set was any indication of things to come when Death Cab ends its current tour July 18 and 19 with two shows at Marymoor Park in Redmond then local fans with tickets to those shows are in for a treat.
The biggest band to ever come from Bellingham played one of the better sets I’ve seen them perform at Gonzaga University (which is saying a lot because I think I have seen DCFC at least a dozen times) last month. The set was a no-frills affair containing just about every song a casual and die-hard Death Cab fan would want to hear without digging too deep into their catalog.
I don’t think there were any notable songs missing (although I don’t recall hearing “Crooked Teeth”) as the band played it safe with the song selection for its set list. An early surprise was “We Laugh Indoors,” which came three songs into the show. The band decided to show off its rarely seen rock star side during the song with Ben Gibbard stepping on effect pedals while hunched over and shaking his guitar for extra reverb punch while Nick Harmer paraded around the stage looking amazingly badass while rocking the fuck out on his bass.
Like I said, the rock star side of Death Cab is rarely seen, but when they pull it out it works well and it was nice to see them stray from the simple standing-in-place-while-playing-music mode they tend to fall into. Just because Death Cab rocked the eff out doesn’t mean they got rid of their Death Cab tendencies. So don’t worry, Gibbard still metronomically sways from side to side while singing.
I’m sure this joke has been made before, but if you combine “I Will Possess Your Heart” and “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” you’ve got one creepy sounding title for a stalker song. The band did just that, sort of, by playing the songs back-to-back with Gibbard getting the girls to swoon by playing “Dark” solo first and then Harmer came back on stage and proved exactly how badass he is with the powerful bass intro to “Heart.” The four-minute intro was 10 times more powerful live than on record as its booming bassline soared through the basketball arena better than it ever could a pair of headphones or home stereo.
Death Cab played only two songs from the excellent EP “The Open Door,” which was a good thing not because the EP is bad (otherwise I wouldn’ have just called it excellent, duh), but because it allowed more room for classic Death Cab material like “Title And Registration” and “Sound of Settling.”
I was particularly impressed with “Cath” as well as the closing combo of “Soul Meets Body” and “Transatlanticism.” And no, there wasn’t any pyro to close the set this time around. From what Ear Candy was told, that was a one-time thing although Ear Candy was also told Death Cab is working on a “surprise” for the Marymoor show, so you never know.
