The Postal Service –
Give Up (Tenth Anniversary Edition)
Back in the day (aside
– it’s quite telling that all my articles start with that phrase),
anniversary editions were a rare thing. An album had to be a true classic that
had stood the test of time for at least 20 years before it was afforded a lavish
re-release. But such is our culture of disposability, an album need only rack
up a few years in the sun before it’s canonised. It was just about OK that the
Manics’ gave The Holy Bible and Everything Must Go the luxury treatment,
but Generation Terrorists too? It
might have been where their story started, but it hasn’t aged well at all. Then
of course there’s the case of Suede who re-released all their albums – but I’ve vented
about that before so let’s move on.
The Postal Service’s Give
Up is definitely worthy of its tenth anniversary edition, not least because
it’s the only album they ever recorded. This new package pulls together their
entire output, including unreleased tracks, b-sides (remember them?), covers, remixes
and even covers of their songs by other artists.
Even at the time I thought Give Up was special – indeed, it was my album of 2003, the first year
that I decided to keep such lists. “Finally”, I said, “an electronic album with
an emotional edge, and one that won’t bore you stiff. Every track is great.” (You
can read more about that ‘vintage’ year over here, but beware –
Athlete are number two on the list). And when I came to compile my top 100 songs of the noughties,
Such Great Heights was the perfect
choice for the top spot.
One of the things that I love about the album is that it
emerged completely out of the blue. It was the result of a collaboration
between two relative unknowns: Ben Gibbard had been shuffling around the
fringes of the US
alt scene with Death Cab For Cutie, and Jimmy Tamborello was an even more
obscure glitchtronica artist (I still haven’t explored his other acts, Dntel
and Figurine). Theirs was a long-distance relationship (hence the band’s name),
with Ben proffering lyrics and vocals to fit Jimmy’s electronic instrumentals. The
juxtaposition of heartfelt lyrics with a synthetic backdrop worked a treat.
I’m of the opinion that lyrics are over-rated, in the sense
that good lyrics can’t save a bad song, but a good song can still have bad
lyrics (T-Rex anyone?). Yet the lyrics on Give
Up are so good that I’m always moved by them. The songs broadly fall into
two categories – the giddy euphoria of blossoming romance (Such Great Heights, Clark
Gable, Brand New Colony) and the
dawning realisation that a relationship has run its course (The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, Nothing Better). Ben Gibbard delivers
both with stunning honesty and clarity. I’m hardly a sucker for romance (ask my
wife), but I can’t help but admire the beauty of Such Great Heights’ opening line:
“I am thinking it’s a
sign that the freckles in our eyes are mirror images and when we kiss they’re
perfectly aligned”
(Kissing is a recurring image actually; Ben kisses an old
flame “in a style Clark Gable would have
admired (I thought it classic)”; whilst he wants to “take you far from the cynics in this town and kiss you on the mouth”
in Brand New Colony.)
The lyrics dealing with the dissolution of a relationship
are equally potent. Take for example the brutal declaration in The District Sleeps Alone Tonight: “I am finally seeing why I was the one worth
leaving”. Or Jen Wood’s opening volley in the duet Nothing Better:
“I feel I must
interject here, you’re getting carried away feeling sorry for yourself with
these revisions and gaps in history”
The female vocal contributions are a vital ingredient to the
album’s make-up actually; alongside Jen Wood’s star turn in the aforementioned
song, Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley pitches in with backing vocals on six tracks.
And lest you think the album is defined by its lyrics and vocals, the closing
track Natural Anthem allows Jimmy to
take centre stage and unleash an avalanche of clattering breakbeats that leave
matters on a visceral note.
So what of this expanded edition? The two previously unreleased
tracks (Turn Around and A Tattered Line Of String) are pretty
good, and would have been the basis of a decent follow-up album. I never heard
the b-sides at the time but they’re also solid (the pick being Suddenly Everything Has Changed,
co-written by Wayne Coyne). There’s a bizarre Timberlake/Timbaland-esque cover
of Phil Collins’ Against All Odds,
but I have a sneaking suspicion that Phil isn’t as reviled across the pond as
he is here.
The remixes are an unexpected highlight. Rather than
mangling the originals by cutting up the vocals and throwing in dancey beats,
they’re a masterclass in careful retexturing, weaving in new touches to
complement and refresh the source material. The covers from The Shins and Iron
And Wine have probably been included to pad things out a bit, and they don’t do
much for me.
Like a true music geek cliché, I fetishised the vinyl edition so plumped for that. It’s truly a thing of beauty, although I was a bit disappointed that the vinyl is plain old black rather than the coloured versions that only come with the Sub Pop pre-orders. One benefit of the vinyl packaging is that it’s actually allowed me to examine the artwork thoroughly for the first time (something that’s even more difficult these days when album artwork is reduced to a thumbnail on your phone). The front cover captures the fanciful dreaminess of the album; through a bedroom window we see a castle in the sky and what appears to be a fleet of alien spacecraft assembling for invasion.
The back
cover depicts a man seeing his (dead? estranged?) bride lost among the waves.
It’s surreal but represents the sense of loss and regret expressed in the
break-up songs perfectly.
In a way I’m glad that The Postal Service only recorded one album. Not because Give Up is so intimidatingly good that
they couldn’t top it (it’s great but not a masterpiece), but because it
captures a moment in time where the stars aligned for two unlikely heroes. As
for their legacy, I’m not sure they really have one (although Owl
City
Vomit.
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