Song Exploder - The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (Deluxe Anniversary Edition)

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

The first episode of Song Exploder, about The Postal Service song "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight," came out 10 years ago, in January 2014. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the podcast, we're doing what bands do, and putting out a deluxe, expanded edition of our very first release: this version features a new interview, new insights, and new pieces of the song and demo. The Postal Service formed in 2001. Their debut album came out in 2003, and it was a game changer. Their combination of electronic music and indie rock not only sold over a million copies; their songs were everywhere on TV and in film, and influenced a generation of artists. Last year, they played sold-out concerts across the US in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the album, and there are more shows to come in 2024. A few weeks ago, I spoke to Ben Gibbard, and I combined that with my original interview from 2013 with Jimmy Tamborello. And here, together, the two of them tell the story of how they made their song “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.” For more, visit songexploder.net/postal-service-deluxe.

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. Somewhere around the end of 2012, I started daydreaming about Song Exploder as a vague idea, a show where you could hear the inner workings of a song and the ideas that went into making all the different parts. I finally decided to try and make some kind of pilot episode in the spring of 2013. I'd never interviewed somebody before, but I asked my friend Jimmy Tamborello if he would be up for letting me try this concept with him. We'd known each other for years at that point. We'd gone on tour together, and I've been a huge fan of his music for a long time. He makes music under the name Dintel, and he's one half of the band The Postal Service, along with Ben Gibbard.

They were just getting ready to go on tour to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their album Give Up. And so Jimmy had already been working with the different stems of their songs to get ready for playing them live. So one day I went to his home studio in L.A., and we sat together in front of his computer, and he played me different parts of my favorite Postal Service song, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight. And I tried to explain what my idea was and what I wanted to get out of the interview. Let's listen to the song and then you point out things that you hear to me. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. This I've never heard of them.

I'll just all the bass parts together. That would be awesome to do that. Yeah, I could play those. Yeah. The synth parts. Yeah, the beat. The synths. While we were talking, I just got more and more excited about this idea.

And then eventually, I put it all together, and that became the first episode of this podcast. And that first episode came out 10 years ago this month in January 2014. And so I thought, to celebrate, what if we do what bands do on their anniversaries and put out an expanded deluxe version of our very first release. My name's... I'm going to look at you while I... Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. What's going on? What's happening?

My name is Jay. And then I'll say... Today we're listening to you. Okay. I've been trying to figure out a way to do it entirely where at. My voice isn't there at all. You have a good radio voice, though. You could come out and...

Just a really anonymous at the beginning, just being like, you know, this is blah blah. Today, blah. Yeah. The Postal Service formed in 2001. Their debut album came out in 2003, and it was a game changer. Their combination of electronic music and indie rock not only sold over a million copies, their songs were everywhere on TV and in film and influenced a generation of artists.

Last year, they played sold-out concerts across the U.S. in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the album, and there are more shows to come in 2024. A few weeks ago, I spoke to Ben Gibbard, and I combined that with my original interview from 2013 with Jimmy Tamborello. And here, together, the two of them tell the story of how they made their song, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight. My name is Jimmy Tamborello from the Postal Service. My name is Ben Gibbard. I play in Death Cap for Cutie, and I moonlight in the Postal Service. And this was kind of like an electronic side project we did together. Jimmy and I first met in spring of 2000.

Death Cab was playing at Space Land in Los Angeles, and there was a band on the bill called ARCA, and Jimmy was playing bass. Allegedly, we met that first night, but very briefly. And, you know, Jimmy is a fairly soft-spoken individual, but about a year later, I was going down to Los Angeles to visit my friend Pedro Benito, and he had said, oh, my roommate, Jimmy Tamborello, he was in that band that you guys played with the last year.

I was like, okay, don't remember it. But he was like, yeah, he has this electronic music project called Dintel, and he's having guest vocalists on his record. Would you mind if I put you guys in contact and he send you a song to work on? And I was like, sure, yeah, why not? I mean, at that age, maybe 24, 25, or you just kind of say yes to everything without questioning it. And he sent me the music that became, this is the dream of evidence. Sean, this kind of really cool, glitchy kind of piece. I wrote atop that, sent him back, I think, a cassette.

And we made a plan to record it when I was down in Los Angeles. So Jimmy and I spent an afternoon in his bedroom working on the song. And over the course of the weekend, just hanging out and becoming kind of friendly, I asked him if he might want to do some more stuff like this because it was so fun and so easy. And he, in his very kind of subdued way, kind of smiled a bit. It was like, yeah, that could be good. So we kind of concocted this plan to do a project together, and I believe the name the Postal Service was thrown about maybe even that weekend based on how we made the first song. Both of us had dial-up connections in 2001. It wasn't like it is now.

So, yeah, it'll be called the Postal Service because we have to mail things, you know, back and forth. One of the many things that attracted me to Jimmy's music was that it felt experimental and it felt new. and interesting, but it also felt as if it kind of had a soul to it. Like, there was a human behind it. So when Ben and I decided to make this record, my first job was just to make a couple instrumentals to send to him to get the ball rolling. And then I would write to that, kind of like a conversation where he's starting it, and I'm hopefully finishing it.

My computer at the time, I think it was a Quadra or something. It was an old Mac. It still wasn't really powerful enough to record audio into it. So I'd mostly use it as like a sequencer. All the music that I was making back then in the early 2000s, I was using mostly one sampler slash synthesizer called the K-2000 from Kurzweil. So all the sounds would be coming out of the K-2000, but controlled by the computer. I think in this song, the drum programming definitely is indebted to Bjork, homogenic.

When I was making this song, I was kind of imagining it as a... a song for Bjork. The K-2000 is pretty flexible as a synthesizer. It comes with a lot of preset bass and pad and all sorts of synthesizer sounds that you can edit. Any sound I used, I would try to change it from the preset just so it would be more original. And then also, I was able to sample outside sound sources and use those in the same machine. So almost everything on the Postal Service album came out of that machine. So I sent an instrumental version of the song to Ben.

So this was the first thing that Jimmy sent to me. And I remember I lived in this attic apartment on Mercer Street in Seattle, and this mail shows up. You know, it's an envelope. It's kind of scraggly writing, Jimmy's handwriting. Open it up, just a CD, no note, no letter, no, hey, I was thinking. this could be about just a CD that said like PS1 or something on it. I put it in like a CD Walkman.

And I just walked around my neighborhood, Capitol Hill in Seattle. It's just like a rainy Seattle night, as they tend to be in December. And just listen to it over and over again. There was just something about those organ chords that start the song. It was just a very kind of melancholic mood immediately. And so it was fairly easy to enter that space where I was reacting to someone else's ideas rather than the idea beginning with me

because half the work was already done. What he sent me didn't require any editing. It allowed my mind to kind of go places lyrically. Thoughts kind of floated across the front of my brain. And I remember listening to it and thinking, oh, I know exactly what I'm going to do with this. smeared black palms are sweaty and I'm barely listening to laugh

I'm staring at the asphalt wondering what's buried underneath So the story's taking place in front of the black cat in D.C., which is a kind of legendary club. I had been on tour with Death Cab and I was seeing a woman who was basically is my first adult girlfriend. We had moved to Seattle together. We'd gotten an apartment. She was a teacher. She had like a real job. And I was trying to do music and working temp jobs and stuff.

And, you know, as often are the case with these relationships when we are young, it didn't work out. And she had moved to Washington, D.C. She was teaching there. So, you know, we had had this kind of day driving around her introducing me to like her new life. You know, having her show me her school and and where she lived, and there was a new experience for me. The idea that a relationship can end and somebody can move across the country and start a totally different life, it was really over, you know? Like, this person had started a new 3,000 miles away. So we were trying to find a space to kind of talk and catch up,

but the backstage at the Black Cat was not really a conducive place to talk. And there was also a line of people going into the show. So I remember we were sitting kind of on the stoop in front of the club, and she had like written down a number of things she wanted to talk about on her hands because she was nervous that she would forget. Specifically things that she perceived that I had done wrong. So that was a pretty indelible image to me from that experience. It was almost like the eulogy for the relationship.

I was torn between trying to listen. while also being very acutely aware of my role and who I was as a member of this band because we were in front of however many hundred people who were trying to go into the club to literally see me play music. So it was a very awkward place to have this conversation, and it was also an awkward conversation. I'm being kind of read a particular type of riot act in the first verse, but then the chorus is almost a dig on this person. Like, this doesn't seem right that you're here.

You seem so out of context in this gaudy of time. apartment complex. She lived in this very kind of bland apartment complex in Arlington, I think. Like one of those places that bureaucrats would live. There's a slight indictment in there as well of like, is this who you are now? Are you no longer cool? Which I think is the kind of thought that a 25-year-old has.

I don't remember how quickly I turned it around and sent it back to Jimmy, but it was within a week. It wasn't that long. I was so excited to work on it. I did vocals. I might have been in this mic I'm talking into right now is an audio technique of 4033. And I think this might be the actual mic.

And that was it. Then I just burned a mix and sent it back to Jimmy, awaited his response a couple days. I think he just said, sounds good, exclamation point. And then any notes? No. That was kind of how it was. There weren't a lot of conversations about things to change

or adjustments to make. Maybe just because we still know each other that well. It was probably weird to ask too much. A lot of it had to do with just Jimmy's personality. He obviously cares deeply about the music that he's making as I do. But we were kind of doing this for a laugh. Ben added this guitar, I think, when he was recording the demo. There was this break in the middle.

And then all of a sudden he was like, do snap, do that. And I just wanted to put something small in there to kind of just mark it as a bridge. Kind of like a death cab style guitar thing. It's kind of chimed part. Really added a lot to the second section of the song. He did the main vocal as well as a bunch of harmonies and kind of background vocals, but it was all his own voice. Once we got further into the recording process, we decided there should be some other voices besides just all Ben.

What made you decide that you didn't want it to just be Ben? What was the thought process of trying that? I think maybe it was nice to not have it be a one-man-based. band type of sound. Maybe it would be too lonely or something if it was just all Ben's vocals. I had had this vision of having a female vocalist, at least doing backups. It just felt as if, like, that was a tone that I think would bring a lot to how I sang because I had such a small kind of reedy voice.

So this seemed like because Jimmy and I were basically making the rules that we went along, we could invite whomever we wanted to come be a part of it. Ben's band Death Cab for Cutie was on Barsuk records at the time, and one of their label mates was Rilke. So I asked Jenny Lewis to sing on the record. I did not know Jenny Lewis. We were not friends. But her band Rialo Kiley had just put a record out on Barsuk,

takeoffs and landings. And I liked that record. So he got in touch with her and asked if she'd be up for doing these background vocals. And she was like, yeah, sure. One more time. Yeah, I mean, this is just a testament to how people roll when they're young. You don't ask a lot of questions. You're just like, yeah, you want to hang out with these two weird dudes you've never met before and make a record?

Yeah, sounds great. So she picked me up at Burbank Airport in the Riloh-Kiley tour van. Which is nice because it was also a time where we could all get to know each other because we really, none of us had hung out very much. Hi, nice to meet you. We got Mexican food and then went to go give up. That's how it went. Almost immediately I had this thought of like, oof, okay, well, we're going to go right into the studio and start making this album.

And we have never sung together before. So I don't really know if her voices are going to work together. But from the jump, she just got it. You know, Jimmy's behind his computer. Jenny's in front of a mic. I'm on a set of headphones. You know, I remember Jenny just having this grin on her face like, hey, this is, this is what we're doing this.

This is weird. This is new, you know. And she would sing one of these things. She'd kind of look over me and just kind of like, and I'd be like, yeah, sounds. great. I am a visitor here. I am not per... And then Jimmy, you just kind of like nod a bit and like we'd move on in the next one. I think my favorite part in the song is the DC Sleeps Alone Tonight harmony.

D.C. sleeps alone tonight. By the time we got Ben and Jenny's vocals together, we were pretty close to finishing the record. mostly just some refining. And in some of the songs, I felt like maybe there need to be a little bit more variety in the sound, so I would add parts. And it might have been just an accident with a delay pedal, but I looped a little bit of Jenny's vocals

and made it into a texture in the song. This vocal loop comes in after the second verse when it's kind of going into the more dancey outro part. It felt as if that moment now with the benefit of high insight is like the introduction of like, hey guys, we can have these indie rock guitars and we can put them on these beats. It's fine.

We're not breaking any rules here. Like no one's gonna get arrested. And it would be very easy to sit here 20 plus years later and retrofit our origin story and pretend as if we knew we were making some landmark album at the time. It's like, no, we were just two dudes who were, who had just met, didn't know each other very well

and thought this would be a good idea. Coming up, you'll hear how all of these ideas and elements came together in the final song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length, and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishi Kesh Her Way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music, talking to other artists,

and it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Wine Robe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April, and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album

with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In the Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website,

Rishikash.co, or just go to SongExploder.net, slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. And now here's the district sleeps alone tonight by the postal service in its entirety. Or visit songexploder.net. You'll find links to buy or stream the district sleeps alone tonight and you can watch the music video. And check out postal service music.net for the postal service's upcoming tour dates. If you like this episode, I also did an episode with Ben Gibbard about a death cap for cutie song, in 2015. You'll find that and all the other episodes of the show at songexploder.net. The original version of this episode was produced and edited by me. This expanded version was produced

by Craig Ely, Theo Balcom, Kathleen Smith, Mary Dolan, and myself. The episode artwork is by Carlos Lerma, and I made the show's theme music and logo. I've thanked him before many times, but my deep thanks to Jimmy Tamborello for agreeing to let me try the idea for this podcast out with him, And special thanks to Ben Gibbard and Jordan Curland as well. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a network of independent, listener-supported, artist-owned podcasts. You can learn more about all our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can follow me on social media at Rishi Hereway,

and you can follow the show at Song Exploder. You can also get a Song Exploder t-shirt at songexploder.net slash shirt. I'm Rishi-Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening. There's this part that was, like, an edit of Jenny's vocals that we used. You can hear that song, you can hear that Jenny part really far in the background. Oh, my God.