Why I Am So Thankful For The Postal Service

There are things in life that you wish for so fervently, there is no way that they can do anything but disappoint you. And then, there are those very, very rare events that manage to be even better than you imagined they could be.

I, like a lot of people my age, fell in love with a band called The Postal Service when I was in high school. For the past ten years, I've kept Give Up close to my heart, revisiting it over and over again and always finding something new to love about it. It is simply one of my very favorite records to ever exist in any time and any place. 

Yet, there was always a great sense of loss that accompanied the record, as well. The Postal Service is the band that got away. After that one perfect record, Jimmy Tamborello and Ben Gibbard went on with their respective lives and continued making great music-- just not together. And for those of us who were so in love with the collaboration, the idea of a Postal Service reunion became one of those musical Moby Dicks that were long chased after and often rumored, but never materialized. 

Until this year, that is. 

When the Postal Service announced that they were reforming (along with Jenny freaking love of my life Lewis) for a tour to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Give Up, I felt like all of the Christmases for the next five years had come early. And I knew that there was no way that I was going to miss it. 

Ten years ago, if you had told me that I would be standing ten feet from the stage in an arena owned by Jay-Z, watching the Postal Service play their one album to a sold out crowd- I probably would have laughed at you. And yet, that is exactly what happened last night. Given my intense expectations, and the fact that I had waited so damn long to see these folks perform together, I was aware that there was a very good chance that I might wind up feeling slightly disappointed. 

Thankfully, that couldn't have been further from the truth. When Ben, Jimmy, and Jenny walked out on stage, that familiar droning synth from "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" started playing and the entire arena lost their collective shit. What followed for the next two hours was nothing short of magical. It was the biggest, most fun, dance party/singalong that I have ever attended. There were several moments where I lifted my arms in the air and looked up at the teeming masses above me and felt such unbelievable amounts of love, there is no other way to describe the experience but "religious."

The audience weren't the only people who could feel the magic. Onstage, the band was energetic and smiling and playful. I've seen Jenny Lewis play a few different shows under different circumstances, but I have never seen her have as much fun as she was having last night. Ditto for Ben Gibbard, who danced and strutted around the stage like he was channeling Bono. Overall, it was abundantly clear that the members of the Postal Service understand why we love the band so much- because they love it just as much. 

The show ended with the joyful, deafening, crowd-led repetition of that final line from "Brand New Colony." Everything will change. Everything will change. Everything will change. 

As I walked outside into the steamy New York air and watched the hipsters dispersing, an overwhelming gratitude settled over me. I felt so thankful for Give Up; for the fact that it came into my life when it did and opened my eyes to a completely different musical landscape. But mostly, I was thankful to the Postal Service for giving us the gift of these reunion shows, for recognizing and rewarding our devotion, and for making a decade-old dream come true.  

Jenny channeling her spirit animal, Dave Mustaine. 

Why Rilo Kiley is My Favorite Of Favorites

If there is one band that I tend to revisit the most frequently, it's Rilo Kiley. 

Every few months, one of their songs will pop up somewhere or I'll read an interview with Jenny Lewis or I'll see Blake on a rerun of Boy Meets World and it will inevitably lead to a week-long RK binge. There's something about the honesty of the lyrics or the way that Jenny sings them or Blake's guitar parts or those charming little interludes on Execution of All Things that make me love the shit out of that band (possibly more than I love any other band). Part of it comes from my California DNA thing, I think. There is something ingrained in Rilo that is just totally LA and it brings out all of the parts of my West Coast upbringing that I love the most. 

But when the palm trees bow their heads...

Anyway, I love LA. Back to business. 

I absolutely hated the way that Rilo Kiley ended. It was one of the most anti-climactic things that's ever happened in the music industry, as far as I'm concerned. Here was a band that was poised for global domination. They had a great back story, musical chemistry, songwriting chops, an exceptional lead guitarist, and a female vocalist who was ready to seduce the entire fucking world. They had two great independent full-lengths which they followed by More Adventurous, a fantastic breakthrough album that got them tons of attention. At the same time, Jenny was doing fantastic work with on her solo project with the Watson Twins and charming the shit out of everyone, while Blake put out two stellar albums with his own side project, The Elected. There was just so much momentum propelling these guys forward.  It was crazy.

And then, it was like the bus broke down. On the highway. In the middle of July. No one was happy. 

The band's major label debut, Under the Blacklight, was totally underwhelming. It had its moments (the song "Silver Lining" is as good of a song as they ever wrote), but gone were the days of indie-pop rock with a hint of country folk sensibility and emotionally resonant lyrics. They were playing around with synthesizers and singing about porn stars and swinging for the Top Forty fences. 

They struck out.

Jenny went on to moderate solo success and made friends with Elvis Costello but the rest of the band totally disappeared off the face of the earth. There was no news of Rilo Kiley until the announcement of a hiatus and then an unofficial break-up.

For me, time has actually been kind to Under the Blacklight. I like it much better now than I ever thought I would. The melodies are catchy and the production is solid and Jenny's voice sounds great. But there are still also things about the album that I don't like (mostly "Dejalo" and "15" and "Smoke Detector") and I still hated the idea that this polarizing, inconsistent effort was the swan song of one of my favorite ever bands.

So when the band announced that the long rumored B-sides and rarities compilation was finally happening, I was completely ecstatic. But my expectations also weren't very high. I assumed that most of the songs would be ones that I had already heard. Things like "Emotional" and "Jenny, You're Barely Alive" and their fun cover of"After Hours." I thought if I were lucky, I might get a few studio versions of songs like "Room 8" and "Butcher's Paper." What I absolutely did not expect were no less than seven songs that I have never heard before, in any context. 

What I really didn't expect was that a majority of them were recorded at the same time as Under the Blacklight. And that they would be just as good as everything else that RK ever did. Because of that, this album has turned Rilo history on it's head for me. I no longer see UtB as a record by a band that was seriously overreaching and broke under the pressure of major label scrutiny (not to mention internal turmoil). Now, I see late-Rilo Kiley as a band that was still prolific and had great songs to offer the world but for whatever reason chose to keep them hidden.

RKives begins with the long awaited studio version of my favorite Rilo song of all time. For years it's been called "I Love LA," but the official title is now "Let Me Back In." It's very similar to the live at ACL and radio recordings that I've been listening to forever, but when those strings came in on the second verse, I nearly burst into tears. I don't understand how a song as great as that one didn't make it onto an album until now. 

I feel the same way about a lot of these songs. "It'll Get You There" would have been right at home with RK's best on Execution of All Things. "Well, You Left" is better than all of Blake's other songs (except Ripchord) and it has a shredding guitar solo at the end that rivals "Spectacular Views". "Bury, Bury, Bury Another"  is country-flavored goodness that easily could have found a spot on More Adventurous. "All the Drugs" and "I Remember You" could have been the best two songs on Under the Blacklight.

My only real complaint about this collection is that they chose to include things that were readily available (like "American Wife" and "The Frug") when I know for a fact that there were other unreleased songs we could have gotten instead. I heard that the Deluxe Edition (which I ordered and should hopefully get sometime before Christmas, due to an industry wide vinyl production problem or some nonsense) comes with a special cassette tape that contains a studio version of "Pull Me In Tighter." That song is phenomenal and deserves a legit release, more so than that "Dejalo" remix that doesn't make me hate that song any less (sorry, Jenny, but "Dejalo" is never going to happen). 

Still, we loyalists take what we can get. Truth be told, RKives is better than it has any right to be, considering it's a collection of B-sides from a band that was hardly a household name. It's an extremely generous present to the fans, one that I am going to appreciate for a long time. Furthermore, if Rilo Kiley never reforms and gifts the world with another album, RKives will remain as an impressive bookend to a phenomenal catalog of tunes.

But, for the record, I'm still holding out hope for a reunion, the eternal optimist that I am. Fleetwood Mac did it, after all.

Bottom Line: Very strong for a B-Sides collection, RKives effectively highlights all of the reasons that made Rilo Kiley a great band to begin with.