You seem so out of context in this gaudy apartment complex

Postal Service: The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

Say what you will about Ben Gibbard, bless his tragic emo heart, but with The Postal Service he hit upon something brilliant that no one has been able to effectively replicate. His fragile, vulnerable voice, prone to fits of anger on the Death Cab for Cutie albums, is a perfect match for the chiming, frosty beautiful sounds of Dntel, and together they breezily surpassed their larger separate bodies of work.

“The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” was the second single from Give Up, and sure, it’s as fey and simple and sentimental as the cover image of a girl in a cluttered hep bedroom sleeping next to her bed, crumpled Kleenex around her, undoubtedly sad letters cluttering the bed, being read by disturbingly animate stuffed animals. Clipped, glitchy beats and maudlin, fuzzy analog synthesizer under Ben’s lyrics about being sad and lonely and in the rain. The cynic in me would love to hate it and sneer at the indie-kids, but dammit, it just works. The crackly violin samples, rising and sunshine-y while Jenny Lewis joins in singing, there’s something both so precious yet so uplifting and lovable about it. Hell, I’ve been dumped and lonely and lost in unfamiliar surroundings. Who’s above heartbreak?

Regarding the rest of this EP, this being reasonably electronic-tinged, we are inflicted with two not terribly worthwhile remixes. DJ Downfall remixes “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” to push it into excessive rave territory, and the whole enterprise is rather embarrassing. Something this potentially awkward needs the light touch that Tamborello brought to it on the album, and this obliterates it for seven minutes. Then John Tejada hops in with an abstract, glitch version of “Such Great Heights” which is also a bit painful in retaining nothing beyond Ben’s vocals and one stretched guitar part. The EP is rounded out by a cover of The Flaming Lips’s “Suddenly Everything Has Changed” in the chilly, fuzzy style of all Postal Service songs and anyone not previously unaware of the song would take it as an original. In any case, pretty good, certainly in contrast to the two remixes preceding it.

On the whole, this EP is an inessential bit of ephemera graced by the presence of one sublime song from the album, with three tacked-on extras.

***

~ by jshopa on October 17, 2008.