One Week, Two Good Concerts: Death Cab for Cutie & Morrissey

Morrissey is still the king of mope rock, if only in his mind.  "Once a panther, always a panther," he exclaimed when he strolled onto the stage Saturday night.  Some of his loyal fans went apoplectic during his excellent set, including one middle-aged man who tried to rush the stage and was tackled by a well-placed and yoked security guard.  Flowers were thrown, arms were waved, and Moz embraced the love like a silver fox summoning his ambiguously sexual prime.

Ever the showman, Moz subjected the audience to 30 minutes of random video clips before he took the stage.  Live performances by The Ramones, Ike & Tina, and other artists were interspersed with strange stand-up comics, civil rights activists, and a poetry reading by Anne Sexton.  During "Meat is Murder," he showed a montage of slaughterhouses that would make even the most strident carnivore reconsider.  He has always enjoyed his bully pulpit, of course, and he continued his long-running feud with the monarchy and his current feud with Ed Sheeran with a series of pointed barbs.  In other words, he was feeling pretty good last night.

He sounded great.  His distinctive, theatrical voice, so decidedly British, was strong and smooth, having lost none of its verve over the years.  His band was superb, and they seemed to play his material with a more rock-oriented sense of urgency, slicing through his melodic vocal arches with blasts of guitars, drums, and keyboards.  Even some of his newer material, essentially unknown to The D Man, was interesting and mostly exciting.

He opened with "Suedehead," one of my all-time favorite solo tracks, and then moved into surprisingly sharp versions of "Alma Matters," "Staircase at the University," "Ganglord," and "Speedway."  The crowd loved "Now My Heart is Full," which anchored the middle of his set, and soaked up a three-song Smiths run of "Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This Before," "What She Said," and "Meat is Murder."  He closed the set with "Everyday is Like Sunday" before an encore of "The Queen is Dead," an unflattering picture of Queen Elizabeth splayed across the screen behind him.  Such is life with Morrissey: abrasive and charming, petty and funny, emotionally complex, often mean-spirited, but always someone singular.

*****

Death Cab for Cutie has largely been abandoned by early indie adopters, which is another way of saying that its audience is now massive.  Some have moved on from the band's emotionalism as a badge of honor, leaving Ben Gibbard's incisive but sometimes overwrought lyricism to a larger fanbase.  Though newer fans may not know tracks from The Photo Album, they certainly know everything from Plans forward, and the 30,000 people that packed Pioneer Park reveled in the band's stadium-sized show regardless of initiation.

Truth is, the band's new album Kintsugi (and eighth overall) has moments as sharp as any previous material, even if it does not reach the cohesive, OC-emo heights of Transatlanticism.  Gibbard and his bandmates, minus founding member Chris Walla, were as polished as their buoyant melodies deserved, and their setlist was tailor made for popular sing-a-longs culled from across their catalog.

"No Room in Frame" opened the show, a highlight from the new record, and was followed by "Crooked Tooth," "Photobooth," and "Black Sun."  The band sandwiched a hard-hitting version of "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" between two career high-points in "The New Year" and "Title and Registration."  Other highlights included a gorgeous rendition of "What Sarah Said," with Ben Gibbard behind the piano, the bubbly guitar interplay on "You Are a Tourist," and the outsized audience participation alongside "Soul Meets Body."

The encore was just about perfect, ending with some of Death Cab's best songs from their best three records, i.e., The Photo Booth, Trasatlanticism, and Plans.  A floating, space-kissed "Passenger Seat" wafted over the crowd, almost making the experience borderline intimate.  "We Laugh Indoors" was the only acceptable alternative to "A Movie Script Ending," and its buzzy, curly cue guitars sounded terrific.  The running chorus of "Marching Bands of Manhattan" soared, as would be expected: sorrow drips into your heart through a pinhole! Then, as the summer night seeped to an end, ticking synth drips of water turned into the memorable piano chords from "Transatlanticism," the band's yawing ode to star-crossed lovers.  Gibbard moved through the emotional watershed of the initial verses and then left the piano for a final, guitar-strewn sendoff: I need you so much closer!  So c'mon!

It was somewhat predictable stuff, sure, but nevertheless fulfilling.  Sort of like the band itself.  If there is room for heart-on-your sleeve, accessible pop music, that makes you feel a step smarter than listening to Neon Trees or Imagine Dragons, then there is plenty of room for Death Cab for Cutie.  Any new fan could tell you that.