Live Shot
Indie-rockers Ben Kweller, Pedro the Lion and Death Cab for Cutie offer study in contrasts at sold-out Rocketown show
With arms outstretched as if he had just broken an imaginary finish-line tape, singer-songwriter Ben Kweller jaunted onto the Rocketown stage last Saturday night to applause. In less than 30 seconds, the 23-year-old had bounded all over the raised platform, strumming his plugged-in acoustic guitar wildly before stopping and pointing at the all-ages crowd. Such forced antics dominated Kweller's hyper, 45-minute set, as he employed rock-star poses and ironic covers—a reworked version of Vanilla Ice's "Ice, Ice Baby," a snippet of Metallica's "Enter Sandman," a Garth Brooks double-shot of "Friends in Low Places" and "Rodeo"—to smother his typically strong originals under a less engaging blanket of flashy entertainment.
While it contrasted with the static but splendid set by Pedro the Lion that preceded it, Kweller's performance was the polar opposite of the mature approach used by show-closers Death Cab for Cutie. The Seattle four-piece—famous for exuding an affable air of normalcy—showed no pretensions as they progressed through a powerful 16-song set. From the dynamic opener, "The New Year," to the escalating finale, "Styrofoam Plates," each member's on-stage movements were natural responses to the energy of the music—unlike Kweller's backward and grandiose attempts to infuse energy into his material. Death Cab's live arrangements were single-handedly pushed into sublime territory by guitarist-producer Chris Walla, who took turns on electric piano and bass when his guitar work wasn't providing novel atmospheric contributions.
All band members but drummer Jason McGerr capably assumed at least two other instruments during the set, often switching mid-song. Two of the more interesting formations resulted in Walla and bassist Nick Harmer swapping their native instruments on the upbeat "Sound of Settling," and vocalist Benjamin Gibbard moving from guitar to a second drum set before returning to guitar and uttering the final lines of "We Looked Like Giants." Such attention to detail culminated in the show's highlight, "Transatlanticism," for which Gibbard started on Wurlitzer and ended on guitar while Harmer and McGerr slowly drove to a crescendo that saw the latter unleash a brutal pounding on his kit.
—Doug Brumley
