The Postal Service + Cex

Cex This had to be last show at which you’d expect a drumset. The Postal Service and Cex are two of the many new acts who have no problem letting their audience know that they’re wizards with a mouse. And yet there singer Ben Gibbard was, scurrying back behind a drumset to play along with the beats of the Postal Service and remind us once again that nothing out of your iMac can simulate the sound of real, honest-to-god drums. But lucky for the Postal Service they weren’t trying to. The beats and tunes that came out of the sing programmer Jimmy Tamborello’s glowing laptop were not the only backup to Gibbard’s vocals, sung in a perpetual whisper that just oozed vulnerability and uncertainty. Joined onstage by guitarist and sometime-singer Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley, the duo beefed up their live effect by adding keyboards, guitars and — yes — real drums, which popped up halfway through several of the songs. From set opener “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” — a surefire crowd-pleaser here in the District of Columbia — the instruments and rushing beats worked together toward one common goal: supporting Gibbard’s voice. Standing centerstage and illuminated by the projector that beamed out ambient images to go with each song, Gibbard was clearly the group’s frontman. Tamborello preferred to duck behind his several keyboards and his laptop, only speaking once through a vocoder to backup Gibbard’s vocals. The Postal Service smartly avoided the always-unsuccessful use of prerecorded backup vocals by bringing Lewis along. Just as she does on the band’s debut album, Give Up, Lewis chimed in or echoed Gibbard’s lyrics, supporting his voice in most songs and adding a few “ba ba ba” to the chorus in “Recycle Air”. Midway through the set, she stepped into the projector’s glow to camp up the duet “Nothing Better”. She and Gibbard cheerfully acted out their parts of the song’s breakup interchange in probably the evening’s highlight performance. The images projected behind the band matched the lively, slightly cheesy IDM-style of the music while occasionally complementing the melancholia of Gibbard’s lyrics, which deal mostly in break-ups and lost loves. A revolving computer-image rainbow or phrases from the songs in bright neon colors were interspersed with abstract, moody images of rolling cloudbanks. One video simply consisted of a single-shot watching a microwave count down the seconds, timed so that it finished right along with the song. Looped footage of a pint of beer being drunk and refilled commented on the song “This Place is a Prison” — which Gibbard dedicated to Seattle. After a smooth set of relaxed tunes without any major stalls, Tamborello hit a literal glitch in the show closer, “Natural Anthem”. During the song’s extended instrumental section, his laptop began producing a sound that could have been passed off as a breakbeat had it ever returned fully to the beat. Gibbard apologized but managed to finish the song, a rough ending to an otherwise seamless set. Opener Cex could learn a thing or two about music and unlearn even more about angst from his touring partners. Originally receiving notice for his white b-boy, raptop songs like “Ghost Rider” — a song that still gets a good crowd response — he has decided to step out of the cheerful, bubbly hip hop role and into something more akin to Marilyn Manson. Standing in the center of the crowd rather than onstage, Cex railed through aggressive, unhappy numbers in more of a hoarse, plaintive desperate shout than a rap. His beats have moved from being quirky, glitch-hop sounds that help Timbaland and Missy E sell records to the rough industrial that Nine Inch Nails already played out years ago.