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Death Cab For Cutie's infamous front man, Ben Gibbard, trips over loose wiring on stage and falls backwards, flat on his ass. He flails about for several seconds, and for some strange reason he looks like an IT professional wrestling with cables in a server room. It must be his haircut. He manages to locate his mic and finish the song before angrily kicking over the mic stand and his set of tiny drums. "We'll see that on YouTube tomorrow," Ben says, half bemused. I just checked - it's not online. Yet.

Yeah, I was there at Massey Hall. Death Cab, collectively, look like big nerds who love to rock out. You wouldn't think it from looking at the guys, but somehow they have a death grip on sad little boys and girls who love without context and routinely break up just to feel something different, something steeped and sharp enough to tear through the apathy. Death Cab songs are anthems for turning romance into a Shakespearean tragedy, of telling a story about a girl who just wasn't good enough. It's self indulgence, selfishness really, but music sorta works that way: it's a catharsis. For angst, for facile politica, for anger, for relief. And Death Cab is one of those bands that pokes and pokes at romantic nostalgia until the tear ducts open wide.

And so, surrounded by couples and emotional sieves, we watched four middle-aged men push and tweak the memories of those in attendance. Now Death Cab For Cutie is not a 'good' live band. Banter: okay. Do the songs sound like the CD tracks? Sure. But the band is a relatively static entity on stage (unplanned tumbles notwithstanding). You can only watch the stage attentively for so long, even from 6 feet away. And so a large part of the show is looking around and trying to see who looks like they're about to cry at any given moment.

Was that 'your' song? Do you remember when he said you weren't really alive, just faking it? And that summer, long ago, when everything seemed okay... and then, oh so predictably, it wasn't? Hey, this song was on 'The OC'! All those recollections. All that shit. The synapses fire and connect, and the experience rapidly moves away from the figures on stage and into the corners of depressive masochism. You could really do this walk down memory lane from home, and for a hell of a lot cheaper too.

Still, diversity pops. The Japanese kid headrocking against the stage knows every word of every song, but he doesn't look sad: he just digs the music. Cupcake girls spend the entire show taking pictures of themselves, trying in vain to fit Ben Gibbard into the background of their shot. They snap and snap and snap and giggle, negotiating the complex, vicious processes of teenage friendship while the girl relegated to the fringe of the group awkwardly looks on, unnoticed. She's probably forming new, bitter connections with Death Cab. She'll be the one who eventually delves deeper into music to find something for herself and only her. She is the future of hip.

And so the self-indulgence continues and the band becomes background, having sparked the memory impetus, at least until they build a crescendo through 'Transatlanticism' and leave the stage to thunderous applause. Shortly after they return, dressed in yellow worksuits and orange hardhats. "We're Devo!" they proclaim, and they certainly are: they play four (FOUR) Devo songs and uncertainty sweeps the floor. What strange new catalyst is this? Halloween ridicule? These guys look like they have an Aztec temple on their heads and sweat is pouring out of Gibbard's sleeve like a waterfall, drenching his fret board. Say goodbye.

Oftentimes I hear people say that seeing their favourite band live was a disappointment; that it forever soured them on the music. Maybe the band itself just isn't that interesting. Maybe other things are. Maybe people just aren't looking around. I think it's something remarkable when the mechanism of the show is enough to supersede the headline act.

[Death Cab For Cutie] [Massey Hall]

Posted by Chris at 04:30 PM >> Commentations (3)