Concert Review - Death Cab for Cutie

Last night was date night. B and I started our evening at our local Chinese Japanese restaurant Toro Sushi for dinner, which despite not being owned or operated by anyone who is Japanese, makes good, affordable Japanese food and sushi. I don’t think we would ever go there for just sushi, but the rolls are good and the cooked food is great. More importantly, it is clean. We then headed over to Soma for the Death Cab for Cutie show. I’ve been into them for a while, but I am totally obsessed by the new album. They are amazing musician and the vocals have a haunting quality. If you like them but don’t have the new CD – GET IT! If you have never heard of them, you can listen to them on their website. Their current single will start playing after the main page is loaded and you can pause, etc. from a little menu bar in the top left corner. Also, as an FYI - you can buy their records right from the record company, Barsuk records. They are a good price and more money goes directly to the artist than to corporate retailers.

I’m always a little nervous to see a band live because sometimes it is just disappointing to see that all that talent that is on their CD is really “assisting” through the production process. Then the CD just doesn’t sound as good to me any more. Well, fortunately, Death Cab does not fall in this category. It was an amazing performance. The only problem is that they were battling a poor venue and had some technical issues going on. Apparently the wireless earpiece the guitarist was using (so he could hear the vocals), was also picking up truckers from the freeway! The sound people also didn’t have the vocals turned up high enough on the front microphone during most of the show. It was good, but you could really hear the quality difference when he sang from the piano in the back. When he came out for the encore to do the acoustic song, I Will Follow You into the Dark, he had them raise the vocals. From then on, the show was great; it’s just too bad there were only two more songs after that. However, I will not hold that against them in any way. You could hear the quality of the performance though the whole show, it was just a little uneven because of the sound levels. So, my question is this: Isn’t that what the guy at the sound board is supposed to do? Could he seriously not hear what was going on?

Overall B and I gave the show a thumbs up and would definitely go back to see them again, but preferably some place that has seats. We’re not 20 anymore and my back hurt and B’s knees hurt after the show, so we had to self medicate with wine :-)