Yahoo! Music Review

Gig played on 06/05/08

It's not exactly clear when the Seattle bred four-piece became a going concern. There's been a handful of moderately well received albums, songwriter Ben Gibbard's hipster friendly Postal Service project and the patronage of vacuous US teen drama "The O.C."; but this doesn't really explain the rapturous response their genial but unfathomably geeky fanbase greet each and every song with tonight. Starry eyed couples hug and sway for the duration and packs of friends who clearly enjoy their commonality played out through DCFC's melancholic yet unflinchingly romantic torch songs nod at each other when their fave comes in, duly mouthing along to every line.

In fairness, there's a lot more to DCFC than vaguely mawkish sentiment swaddled in layers of bookish pathos and the points at which they peak tonight - some nifty post-rock style guitar interplay married to shrewd minor chord melodies - hint at a Crowded House-like stadium indie pop future. Their deft control of brooding atmospherics, a precision point rhythm section and rousing singalong choruses will surely help their cause too as they seek to fill these larger venues and vast festival stages.

It all slots into place during a trio of mid-set songs, each one showcasing a different strand of DCFC's expertise. A sleek and purposeful "Soul Meets Body", arguably their best single to date, sounds like some lost New Order classic, "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" is a pared down and genuinely moving dedication to a troubled friend and eight minutes' worth of new single "I Will Possess Your Heart" - its predatory bass line aping Gibbard's vaguely fanatical lyric - suggests a sinister edge sorely lacking from their material to date.

But moments such as these are rare. Though they rock harder than you might expect, it's still too polite and airy and the set quickly becomes rather tiresome. Gibbard's voice is unfeasibly grating after a while as well, winsome and chewy and ever over earnest. There's no doubting he knows his way around a vocal melody (and irritatingly, a vast rhyming dictionary) but after a while it becomes apparent that the melodies are all based around similar motifs and his phrasing and meter become too predictable, each couplet tied to an all too staid rise and fall in tone.

The alternative for Death Cab For Cutie tonight would have been sticking to the darker, more complex material of new record "Narrow Stairs". Whilst this might have made for a more engaging affair, it seems the band's focus remains set on the dedicated fans who could yet steer them towards the globe-straddling indie stardom patently within their grasp.

by Jim Brackpool