music

The Postal Service – Give Up (Deluxe 10th Anniversary Edition) (2013)

These 15 bonus tracks are probably the closest we’ll ever come to getting a followup to one of the greatest indie records of all time.

The Postal Service’s 2003 record Give Up was, and still is, a great body of music. Even today it sounds as fresh and as clear as it did so many years ago. Fans were eager for another record to follow, but Gibbard and Tamborello seemed reluctant to commit to or even suggest that another album would follow.  As the years wore on it seemed less and less likely.  Both members were busy with their main bands, and then in 2013, they announced their permanent disbandment.

Fortunately, they offered the fans one final hurrah, a deluxe edition of Give Up replete with B-sides, remixes, and 2 brand new tracks.  And being that the output of the Postal Service is/was so very limited, it pretty much acts as their complete discography!  With the album proper consisting of only 10 tracks, this 10th anniversary edition tacks on a whopping 15 bonus tracks, 2 of which are covers of Postal Service songs by other bands.  Some of these extra tracks will be familiar to you if you picked up the vinyl pressing of Give Up.  Let’s take a look at that full track list:

1. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight ¹
2. Such Great Heights ¹
3. Sleeping In ¹
4. Nothing Better ¹
5. Recycled Air ¹
6. Clark Gable ¹
7. We Will Become Silhouettes ¹
8. This Place is a Prison ¹
9. Brand New Colony ¹
10. Natural Anthem ¹
11. Turn Around ²
12. A Tattered Line of String ²
13. Be Still My Heart ³
14. There’s Never Enough Time ⁴
15. Suddenly Everything Has Changed ^{5, 10}
16. Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now) ^{6, 11}
17. Grow Old with Me ^{7, 12}
18. Such Great Heights (John Tejada Remix) ⁵
19. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (DJ Downfall Persistent Beat Mix) ⁵
20. Be Still My Heart (Nobody Remix) ⁹
21. We Will Become Silhouettes (Matthew Dear’s Not Scared Remix) ³
22. Nothing Better (Styrofoam Remix) ³
23. Recycled Air (Live on KEXP) ⁸
24. We Will Become Silhouettes ^{4, 13}
25. Such Great Heights ^{4, 14}

1. original tracks from Give Up
2. new tracks
3. B-side to “We Will Become Silhouettes” single
4. B-side to “Such Great Heights” single
5. B-side to “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” single
6. from The Wicker Park soundtrack
7. from Instant Karma: The Amnesty International Campaign to Save Darfur
8. from Yeti Three compilation
9. from Revisions Revisions: The Remixes 2000  – 2005 compilation
10. The Flaming Lips cover
11. Phil Collins cover
12. John Lennon cover
13. performed by The Shins
14. performed by Iron & Wine

Depending on how far out from the original album you ventured, you may be thinking that this deluxe package is a veritable gold mine of excess Postal Service material.  Even though I’d long since downloaded a few of the B-sides and owned the vinyl copy with several of these tracks as well, I was still impressed by the offering.  So let’s get right down to it: are these 15 extra pieces of music worth having?

The answer is a mildly complex yes and no.  Clearly within this sheer volume of extra material there is invariably something worth listening to, but I’m not convinced that it really adds anything to what’s already been established.  In short, most of these tracks sound exactly what they were intended to be – B-sides.

The original album is a fine piece of music, with the possible exception of the final track, “Natural Anthem,” which is essentially an experiment in noise that has little in common with the remainder of the album.  Why it was tacked on to the end leaves me a little perplexed, but at least it was the end it was appended to instead of being thrown in the middle somewhere.  Quite conveniently, I can “pretend” that Give Up concludes with “Brand New Colony.”

The remaining material isn’t nearly as off-base as “Natural Anthem,” yet it fails to even capture the spirit of Give Up’s more mediocre moments.  “Turn Around” and “A Tattered Line of String” are the two brand new tracks on here, and I seriously wonder if these were leftovers that Gibbard and Tamborello either already had recorded or chose to hastily finish.  Both maintain the cool, clean, and crisp synths of the original album yet they fail to engage on a melodic level.  They’re not particularly bad, but they sound like someone who’s trying to sound like the Postal Service instead of the real deal.  In “Turn Around,” it doesn’t even sound as if the two are playing/singing the same song at times.  “Tattered Line” falls short because of its blasé rhythmic structure and lack of a truly infectious hook.

It’s funny sometimes when a huge fan of a band first learns about B-sides.  Typically they react with something like, “wait, you mean there’s all kinds of real insert band name here songs on the singles that aren’t on the albums!?”  It’s one of the ways record companies encourage even more sales.  But what some people don’t realize is that these band’s know that whatever songs are packaged with singles have the potential to gain zero recognition.  So they keep their best stuff on the album, and generally use weaker tracks from the recording sessions or other such outtakes as B-side material.  And so we get to the next track, “Be Still My Heart,” originally a B-side to “We Will Become Silhouettes.”  And a B-side is what it sounds like; not great, not terrible, but certainly a below average representation of the album’s overall sound.  It’s got a nice mix of “bleeps” and “bloops,” though the irritating and endless guitar note mixed with the static and uninspired drums make for a decidedly mediocre listen.

“There’s Never Enough Time” is pulled from the “Such Great Heights” single, and it’s one of the bright spots throughout the 15 extra cuts.  It’s a relaxed and slightly hypnotic piece of music, much quieter than what’s found on the album proper.  Perhaps it could’ve been fleshed out a tad more (again, it’s missing the amazing rhythms that Give Up has to offer when it’s at its best), but for a B-side, you could do a lot worse.

The following 3 tracks are all covers, again taken from various releases.  This is a fairly mixed bag; I don’t think the guys had a clear idea of how to translate other songs into their style.  “Suddenly Everything Has Changed” comes the closest to a success since there is some stylistic overlap with the Flaming Lips in some weird way.  “Against All Odds” comes off as repetitive and boring, yet strangely inoffensive.  “Grow Old with Me” is the most bizarre of the bunch, lacking a cogent sound or flow.  It’s as if a lot of pleasant sound pieces of music were glued together with jagged edges to create something utterly unpleasant and out of sync.  Why couldn’t they just tackle Lennon’s “Imagine” like everyone else?  I think they could’ve made something beautiful there.

Next up are the 5 remixes.  Remixes don’t often do a lot for me, but every now and then, there is that wonderfully transcendent remix that creates something entirely new and separate from the original song and deserves to be listened to in its own right.  Though I rarely find this, it’s an exquisite enough experience that I do and will put myself through listening to remixes of songs I already like.  The results can be especially interesting with electronic music.  Sadly, the “Such Great Heights,” “We Will Become Silhouettes,” and “Be Still My Heart” remixes are throwaways.  They don’t totally suck, but they don’t come anywhere close to recapturing the magic of the originals and for that reason I don’t find them much worth listening to.  They might make some decent background music, but no more.

That leaves only the remixes of “Nothing Better” and “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.”  I’m still somewhat undecided about the “Styrofoam Remix” of “Nothing Better;” though I think the instrumentation is beautiful, I don’t think it really touches on the original’s funky rhythm and almost whimsical use of sound.  I guess it’s pleasant enough to listen to on its own, I just can’t forget how much better the original is.  However, the “DJ Downfall Persistent Beat Mix” of “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” is absolutely amazing.  I actually prefer it over the original album version in every single way.  The original “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” is a melancholy and meandering piece floats all around the mark without ever hitting it.  The remix gives it form and focus and transforms the song into something spectacular with pulsating rhythms and an explosive climax.

Track 23, a live version of “Recycled Air,” was admittedly a track I sorted of glossed over at first.  But that was wrong.  It’s exceptionally high in quality, and utilizes an acoustic guitar instead of electronics for the instrumentation.  It’s a beautiful rendition, and it really makes me want to hear more Postal Service songs done in this fashion.

Last but not least are 2 songs that aren’t actually performed by the Postal Service at all, but rather covers of Postal Service songs.  “We Will Become Silhouettes,” from The Shins, is a marginally more energetic and upbeat take on the original.  It’s competent and listenable, and the Shins appropriately made it their own, though its indie/folk rock leanings aren’t exactly a style I care for.  “Such Great Heights” from Iron & Wine is similarly styled, though the music itself is slowed to a near crawl.  It’s a cool rendition of Give Up’s perhaps most cheerful tune.  The bubbly, syncopated romp is transformed into a drowsy, dreamy tune with a pleasant, peaceful lethargy to it.  Now the real question is whether or not I’d be inclined to like this if I didn’t already know “Such Great Heights;” certainly part of the appeal is hearing the track’s drastic transformation.

That’s quite a bit of extra material, in fact it’s 150% more music than what fans of the original album have heard.  But I would posit that there is a good reason this stuff wasn’t included on Give Up nor turned into an additional release: it simply isn’t up to snuff with what “The Postal Service” represents to most of us.  I definitely think having what is essentially the entire catalog of the Postal Service in one place is great, I would just caution listeners to differentiate between what Give Up proper is and the bonus tracks.

In conclusion I love the idea of this deluxe 10th anniversary release. I definitely know what it’s like to want every shred of material from an artist, and it seems like a fitting end to the short but powerful stint that was the Postal Service.  My only reticence stems from the fact that these bonus tracks have the potential to dilute the brilliance of Give Up.  I would definitely encourage ardent fans to give this a listen, just remember that the extra stuff is supplemental, and that the group’s finest artistic output remains on Give Up as it was intended over 10 years ago.

Lets us know how you feel about Give Up’s 15 bonus tracks in the Comments area below!

Written by The Cubist