He’s largely known as “the other guy” in the Postal Service, but Jimmy Tamborello deserves a little more credit. After all, he is the architect of all the PS songs you’ve loved and obsessed over for the last decade.
Tamborello’s instrumental compositions are the digital backbone from which his much more famous cohort, Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, draped, twisted and intertwined the memorable lyrics and melodies of the Postal Service’s sole album, the platinum-selling Give Up.
Now, 10 years later, Gibbard and Tamborello aren’t actually delivering a long-awaited followup to their legion of fans. Instead, they’re reissuing a deluxe edition of Give Up, along with two new songs and, finally, embarking on a full tour that will also feature honorary third member Jenny Lewis (Rilo Kiley), who provided background vocals on the album.
Tamborello took CBC Music on a guided tour through some of Give Up’s biggest hits, including “Such Great Heights” and “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight,” and answered our questions about what it's like coming full circle a decade later.
"The District Sleeps Alone Tonight"
"That was one of the first songs we did together for the album, that one and the one that became 'Brand New Colony.' When I was making the instrumental, there was a lot of influence from Björk and this instrumental band I was listening to at the time called Lali Puna. When I sent it to Ben, I didn’t really have an idea as to what direction he’d take it, so when I got it back I felt like it created the blueprint for where the rest of the record went."
"Such Great Heights"
"That was one of the last songs we made and it actually started out as a cover of a song, even though it doesn’t sound anything like it and we’ve always avoided saying what the sound was. We started playing it as a cover and it wasn’t really working, but we liked the aesthetic of it and the sound I was using and the energy. So we just remade the instrumental and that song is what came out of it."
"Nothing Better"
"Ben had it in his mind that he wanted to have a duet on the album and when I sent him that song, it wasn’t set up as a duet or anything. He just decided on that one and we’d talked about it before, inspired by Human League’s 'Don’t You Want Me.' When we were first sending songs back and forth, Jenny Lewis wasn’t in the picture yet. All the background vocals, Ben was just singing himself.
"Jen Wood came in first. She lived in the Northwest where Ben was, so he brought her in because he knew he liked her voice, and she also sang on 'Such Great Heights.' Then as we got closer to finishing the records, we decided we should replace Ben’s background vocals with someone else so it didn’t sound too weird and that’s when we brought Jenny in."
Did it always work that way: instrumental first, then lyrics?
For that whole record, I made instrumentals and sent them to [Gibbard] and he would write the lyrics and he would usually restructure the instrumentals a little bit. I would usually send it to him in block form, like verse, chorus, verse, chorus and then he would arrange it for what he wanted to do vocally, then add live instruments and extra keyboards and stuff.
Were you ever surprised by what lyrics came back with the songs?
Almost every time I got a song back from Ben with vocals on it, it was always a surprise and it always took a few listens to get used to it in my head. I always had an idea of what I would have imagined for vocal melodies and stuff. And the lyrics — I’ve never been very good at paying attention to lyrics. I hear vocals more because I like the melodies and the sound of the voice. I can’t really remember what I thought of the lyrics as they were coming in. Though, I guess I remember being excited they were so melancholy.
But I think one of the reasons the songs have endured is that beautiful melancholy.
Ben and I both really had our guards down for this record. It was just something we did for fun and a side project and not something more serious. Maybe that let us do things production-wise and lyrically that we wouldn’t have done normally.
What about the two new songs, “A Tattered Line of String” and “Turn Around”?
They were from the time in 2006 when we started thinking we might try to make another record. That happened over the years a couple times, where we’d sort of start to work on stuff and then it just kinda died off. We had the song sitting around in a rough state since 2006, so for the reissue we just decided to fix 'em up and put them out on that. This last year we worked on them a little bit, but they sound mostly like they did in 2006, though we made them a little better and added Jenny’s vocals.
Does it feel strange to be going back out on tour with not quite the same record but almost the same record 10 years later?
We never really got a chance to tour much, just a month when the record first came out, and never really toured once it became more popular. I’m glad we get to do it and it’s going to be really good to be back with Ben and Jenny. And it’s been 10 years since we really listened to these songs, so we’re not that sick of them.
Follow Andrea Warner on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner
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