Death Cab For Cutie at the Agganis Arena

Boston get's a part two of the indie rock band Death Cab For Cutie from Bellingham, Washington. This time they're playing indoors at Boston University's Agganis Arena. 6300 seats were filled that evening eager to get through the opening act Saint Vincent and sing along to Death Cab's lengthy but catchy tunes. The band is composed of Ben Gibbard, Chris Walla, Nick Harmer and drummer Jason McGee all of which are multi-talented musicians and major contributors to the music industry.

They began their set the same way they begin their newest release Narrow Stairs with the song Bixby Canyon Bridge, immediately followed by the song New Year that is also the first track to their fifth full length album Transatlanticism. These two songs really set the tone of the concert as they do with both albums. With their lengthy but trippy repetitive build ups they tempt you to close your eyes, relax and then fall backwards into an ocean of hands crowd surfing while singing along to Ben Gibbard's (for lack of a better description) innocent story-time-telling voice. Of course this isn't the type of band that gets one to mosh and crowd surf but they are definitely easy listening and a good time on a Friday night at a college arena. Death Cab for Cutie's poignant sounds and lyrics constructed off all of their albums are certainly reflected in their live performance.

They did a good job playing songs from almost all of their albums so no fan from a certain era in Death Cab's music career would feel left out. The show displayed Death Cab from 1997 to the present time and it was quite awesome to see that there are still bands out there that enjoy playing their older stuff still. They played Laugh Indoors from the album The Photo Album, Crooked Teeth from the album Plans, Title Track and Scientist Studies from the album We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes, We Looked Like Giants from Transatlanticism (where guitarist Chris Walla and bassists Nick Harmer switched instruments), and many others in this well rounded two hour set.

Death Cab For Cutie puts on a good show with their energy and appeal to the crowd playing sing along favorites such as I Will Follow You Into The Dark, Soul Meets Body, I Will Possess Your Heart, Long Division and The Sound of Settling. As depressing as they sound when it comes to their lyrics they are actually quite the opposite on stage. Not one member of the band stands still on stage. Something was always happening whether they're switching instruments or relating to the crowd telling them A Movie Script Ending is about college jokingly saying that we couldn't relate. They also apologized for insulting the entire city of Boston the last time they were here over the summer at the Bank of America Pavilion (something to do with our sport fans that was completely true but I won't get into that myself to prevent any further argument).

When they ended their main set with Scientist Studies they walked off stage and as expected the lights remained off encouraging the audience to be an audience and yell and scream encore. A good five to ten minutes later they reappeared thanking everyone who stuck around and begun a five song encore set. The first song of this new set is from their first album Something About Airplanes called Champagne from a Paper Cup which is actually being rereleased among other older songs in November of 2008. They then played Title and Registration from Transatlanticism and Photobooth from the Forbidden Love EP. For the second to last song both Chris Walla and Nick Harmer played bass for the song Tiny Vessels which I found interesting personally. To wrap it up they performed Transatlanitcism with Ben Gibbard on the piano getting people's liters and cell phone backlights waving in the air for a final goodbye. They thanked the audience politely and walked off the stage leaving everyone still wanting more. But there was no more to be done. They put on a memorable show that will leave both hardcore fans and regular listeners pleased with the $35 plus convenience charge ticket spent.

Article Tools