This Mini-Doco About The Postal Service Proves Them To Still Be Both Brilliant And Awkward

One of my very first assignments as a street press writer was interviewing Ben Gibbard before a Death Cab For Cutie show. He seemed even more nervous than I was, and spent the first few minutes staring at his shoes — but after he laughed at a dumb joke I made (I can’t remember what it was about) things warmed up, and we covered a lot of ground.

Even as a rookie writer, though, I knew better than to ask him about his other band.

In around 2001, Gibbard had collaborated with producer Jimmy Tamborello on a sweet, wistful electronic track called ‘(This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan’. The track was released under Tamborello’s Dntel alias, but it went over so well that the two formed a side-project of their own.

The Postal Service got its name from the way Gibbard and Tamborello worked together: sending DAT recordings back and forth in the mail. Their debut album, Give Up was a huge hit, with songs like ‘Such Great Heights’ and ‘Sleeping In’ finding their way onto a million playlists and mixtapes. After touring Give Up, the pair went their separate ways — but since then, every interviewer and nostalgic fan has been determined to find out if they’d ever reunite.

I hedged my bets, and asked a more general question about Gibbard and pop music: “Would you consider dabbling in that kind of keyboard-based sound again?”

He chuckled; he saw right through the question. “I did some experimentation early in my career — but to put it frankly, I wasn’t very good at it, and the music turned out to be shit.

“The Postal Service worked out so well because Jimmy’s very good with electronic music,” he continued. “It was good, because working with him allowed me to experiment with that side but let him look after the music.”

The way he spoke about it, the prospect of another Tamborello collaboration was not out of the question — but at that point, his attentions were squarely on Death Cab.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Give Up, still the only Postal Service album, which was toured very briefly in 2003. Recognising how beloved the record remains, Gibbard and Tamborello got the old band back together, to take it on the road one more time.

A deluxe reissue of Give Up came out earlier in the year too, and now there’s Some Idealistic Future: a short documentary that you can watch in full below, which goes behind the scenes of the band’s recent Barclay’s Center show.

The film offers various insights into The Postal Service’s creative process. The adorably awkward Gibbard talks about how he wrote the songs while walking around listening to instrumental tracks on his old Discman — and he uses the word ‘interface’ way more times than you’d think — while Tamborello shows off some of the old gear he used to make the now-iconic beats and bleeps.

Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley and Jenny And Jonny was another important part of The Postal Service — she lived in the same apartment complex as Tabmorillo, and sang vocals on several of Give Up’s tracks. She recounts the story of how she got involved with the band, nerding out, getting super emotional, and essentially winning the interview portion of the doco.

At the end, Gibbard  says something cryptic about how the reunion has given him some perspective on the success that The Postal Service “inadvertently accomplished”. There’s no hint on what the future might hold for the band, but if Some Idealistic Future proves anything, it’s that the opening strains of ‘Some Great Heights’ still sound pretty stirring 10 years on.

Also of note: is it just me, or does Ben Gibbard look a LOT like Peter Dinklage from a certain angle?