May 08 2008 10:13 am,
3.0
Death Cab For Cutie
Electric Ballroom,
London
06/05/08
Death Cab For Cutie don’t set foot on English soil very often. But for those who watch The O.C. (the programme that virtually adopted DCFC as their house band), it feels like the
Seattle quartet are very much part of day to day living. And perhaps it’s because the group have become so familiar through snippets on TV, rather than via their live shows, that it’s so difficult to take an hour and half of them. The band exist on a plateau and although there is pleasure to be had from absorbing yourself in their songs the way you would on headphones, that’s made difficult by an awkward sound consistently set at low volume. The effect is to emphasise Death Cab as a band you don’t need to see live. They’re not exactly entertainers. But this crowd aren’t here for acrobatics, they’re here for some kind of communion. And that’s what they get – ‘New Year’ is almost explosive, ‘
Bixby
Canyon
Bridge’ is veil-like, and the upbeat moments like ‘Soul Meets Body’ are extenuated by their rarity. This is PG-rated, lo-fi indie translated by Mercury Rev fans. And it may be passive, but in some ways it’s nice that DCFC attract the decent sort of folk that say sorry when they knock your beer by mistake, even though it’s impossible to avoid contact in this packed venue. The atmosphere is utterly unthreatening, and it does say a lot for Death Cab’s power that, on a day when there was a shoot-out on
Chelsea’s
Kings Road, they can create a safe haven in
Camden.
Johnny K
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