SHOW REVIEW: Death Cab For Cutie Visit The Iconic Starland Ballroom
SHOW REVIEW: Death Cab For Cutie Visit The Iconic Starland Ballroom
Supporting Death Cab was the legendaryJenny Lewis
Words and Images by: Jacquelyn Kozak
Ask any fan what their favorite Death Cab For Cutie track is and you’re likely to not hear the same answer twice. In fact, I did just that and got five different answers: “What Sarah Said”, “Transatlanticism”, “Styrofoam Plates”, “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”, and “Summer Skin” (my own vote). This is a testament to the band’s versatility and staying power. The evolution of sound from their first album to their latest is subtle, but it’s there.
On Monday, June 10th, Death Cab for Cutie brought their 2019 tour to the iconic Starland Ballroom in New Jersey – and I was finally about to cover my ultimate bucket-list band. This tour follows on the heels of 2018’s Thank You for Today, the band’s ninth studio album since forming in 1997.
For a Monday night concerts, I expected the crowd to be a little light – but was pleasantly surprised that I was wrong. The crowd was a healthy mix of older couples, young parents with their smaller children, tattooed millennials and their significant others – it was truly a place where it didn’t matter who you were or what you looked like, because everyone knew the words.
With just one opener, the sets were long and comprehensive. Up first was Jenny Lewis, who you may know as former front-woman for [now-defunct] Los Angeles indie rock outfit, Rilo Kiley. She opened her set, in a badass black jumpsuit, with “Heads Gonna Roll”. While fans of Rilo Kiley may still be mourning the breakup, the closest you can come to seeing a resurrection is seeing Jenny Lewis on tour currently with ex-drummer, Jason Boesel. She went on to play eleven songs, and yes, she included “Silver Lining” of Rilo Kiley fame.
After Jenny came the main event. As the house lights came on and the stage set up brightened, Death Cab for Cutie took the stage to the opening instrumentals of “I Dreamt We Spoke Again”, a dreamy, synth-forward boppy hit. With nine full length albums, it’s almost impossible to please everyone, but it seemed like the band was doing a good job trying. Mixed throughout the whopping 23 song set were both old and new favorites. They flowed effortlessly between newer songs like “Summer Years” and “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive”, to tried-and-true classics like “Expo ‘86” and “We Looked Like Giants”.
Unfortunately for the OG Death Cab for Cutie fans who favor their early releases – 1998’s Something About Airplanes, 2000’s We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes, and 2001’s The Photo Album – none of these made it into the set (and rarely do). The farthest the band goes back into their discography is songs from 2003’s Transatlanticism, which had a healthy showing on the setlist. Overall, Death Cab designed a beautiful setlist to satisfy every kind of fan.
After 19 songs, the band took a brief pause before coming out for the encore, which was a four-song highlight reel of what some can consider Death Cab’s biggest songs. They opened it with an extended version of “I Will Follow You Into the Dark”, then transitioned into “When We Drive”, one of their most notable songs from their newest release. From there, they closed with two heavily-rotated hits, “Tiny Vessels” and “Transatlanticism”. The stage lights switched to a blinding white and a silhouetted frontman Ben Gibbard took a bouquet of flowers from a front-row fan and very humbly said, “This has been a band called Death Cab for Cutie, thanks for coming out.”
