Ben Gibbard with Advance Base at The Woman's Club of Minneapolis, 11/1/12

Owen Ashworth from Advance Base.

I found out kind of last-minute that Ben Gibbard had released a solo record, his first release since Death Cab's Codes and Keys (not my favorite DCFC album) and since his breakup with Zooey Deschanel. I hurried to my local record store to pick up a copy. I like the record so far -- it features a duet with Aimee Mann that is quite pleasing to me. I realized just in time that he was kicking off his tour in Minneapolis and jumped on tickets, but since it was a seated show, found myself toward the back and off to one side.

I had a frustrating day that was compounded when I had to drive through Minneapolis traffic with bad directions, only to find that parking near the venue was nearly impossible. By the time I got in and sat down I was not in what you might call a concert-going mood.

Telling a story.

Luckily for me, the first words sung by the opener, one man with a keyboard and a synthesizer who was calling himself Advance Base, revealed that he was Owen Ashworth from the band Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. It's a band I've been thinking about a lot lately, since their song "Cold White Christmas in Saint Paul" is about a 22-year-old girl graduating from college and moving to Saint Paul, where she's incredibly lonely. It's a lot more depressing than my actual life, but the fear of winter still looms in my mind.

I really enjoyed Ashworth's set, and Advance Base is a lot like Casiotone for the Painfully Alone. He opened the show with a song called "Christmas in Oakland" and closed it with one called "Christmas in Milwaukee". He seems to write a Christmas song about everywhere he goes. They're not, mostly, about Christmas.

Smiley.

The set was short, and afterward I went out to the merch table, where I couldn't buy his CD because the only card-reading machine was Owen's cellphone. I had George, his merch guy and part-time printmaker, hold some things for me and I went back to my seat.

I'd always wanted to see a solo Ben Gibbard show. I've got a bootleg copy of one from years ago when he was on tour with Johnathan Rice and David Bazan, and the guitar-only Postal Service songs are kind of magical. Not to mention the banter and the weird covers ("Thriller"? "All Apologies"?). Ben Gibbard is half musician and half stand-up comedian when he's on stage by himself. His stage persona is pretty different solo than when he's with Death Cab. Between songs he related anecdotes about "Blunited Airlines" losing his guitar on his way into Minneapolis, what the guitars mean to him personally and professionally, and the completely unapologetic nature of the man supposedly helping him find his lost luggage. Other interludes discussed his tendency toward profanity, the music world's acceptance of that, and how it doesn't work in the real world. He apologized to his parents, who were in the audience somewhere, for all the cursing.

"Teardrop Windows" is a single from the new album that Ben prefaced with a story about the music video he had released for it that day. Halfway through his pitch about how we should go watch the music video, he stopped, saying "I just realized this is kind of a shitty sell, when I'm standing here with a guitar in my hand telling you to go listen to this song somewhere else. I'll just shut up and play it. It's the first night of the tour and I clearly need to work on my sales pitch." That was pretty true. But I watched the video anyway, and you can check it out here.

The music itself was wonderful. He played some new solo material on guitar and piano, mixed in with Death Cab from several albums, a couple of Postal Service tracks, some of the work with Jay Farrar, a track he wrote with Dntel (his Postal Service collaborator) and even an All-Time Quarterback song. He's got this adorable shuffle going on when he plays alone, occasionally throwing his left leg out in front of him -- none of the characteristic twisting back and forth you see at DCFC shows. The light reflected off of his guitar and made this bright spot on the wall of the auditorium that I found strangely transfixing. The crowd was calm (I hate seated shows) except for the very drunk man immediately across the aisle from me, who kept trying to scream lyrics out loud and was suppressed, with little success, by his friend.

Toward the end, Ben talked about having been a fan of the Minneapolis music scene in the early 90s, and played "I'll Be You," a Replacements cover.

Here's the setlist:
Shepherd's Bush Lullaby (Ben Gibbard)
Such Great Heights (Iron and Wine cover)
Oh, Woe (Ben Gibbard)
These Roads Don't Move (Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar)
Glove Compartment (Death Cab for Cutie)
Dream Song (Ben Gibbard)
When the Sun Goes Down (Ben Gibbard)
Grapevine Fires (Death Cab for Cutie)
The Dream of Evan and Chan (Dntel ft. Ben Gibbard)
Something's Rattling (Cowpoke) (Ben Gibbard)
Passenger Seat (Death Cab for Cutie)
Duncan, Where Have You Gone? (Ben Gibbard)
Unobstructed Views (Death Cab for Cutie)
Blacking Out the Friction (Death Cab for Cutie)
Soul Meets Body (Death Cab for Cutie)
Teardrop Windows (Ben Gibbard)
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (Postal Service)
I'll Be You (Replacements Cover)
Farmer Chords (Ben Gibbard)
Cleveland (All-Time Quarterback)
I'll Follow You into the Dark (Death Cab for Cutie)
--
I'm Building a Fire (Ben Gibbard)
Crooked Teeth (Death Cab for Cutie)
You Remind Me of Home (Ben Gibbard)

Shiny guitar.

I loved that he ended with "You Remind Me of Home". It's my favorite of his solo tracks before this most recent release, and a nice note to end on.

After the show, I went back out to buy my CDs and spent some time talking to Owen Ashworth, who turns out to be pretty awesome. We talked about "Cold White Christmas in Saint Paul" and he said it was a song he was really proud of and considered playing, given its geographical appropriateness, but that he had made a pact with himself to play only new songs on this tour. Alas.