Give Up is the only studio album by the American electronic duo the Postal Service. The album released on February 19, 2003, through Sub Pop Records. The Postal Service was a collaboration between singer-songwriter Ben Gibbard, best known for his work with indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, and musician Jimmy Tamborello, who also records under the name Dntel. Gibbard rose to prominence in the early 2000s as frontman of Death Cab, while Tamborello gained a cult following as a pioneer of contemporary glitch music and electronica. The two first collaborated with the song "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan", for Dntel's debut album, Life Is Full of Possibilities (2001).

The album is a long-distance collaboration between Gibbard, who lived in Seattle, Washington, and Tamborello, who resided in Los Angeles, California. The duo named the project for their working method: the pair would send demos on burned CD-R's through the mail, adding elements until songs were complete. The LP's sound contrasts manipulated samples and keyboards with live guitar and drums—a sound some have described as "indietronica". Tamborello was responsible for the programming, while Gibbard wrote lyrics, provided vocals, and contributed additional instrumentation. Give Up also features guest appearances from vocalists Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley and Jen Wood, as well as musician Chris Walla, who was an instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer for Death Cab for Cutie.

Give Up was released with little promotion—the group embarked on a brief tour together, but otherwise returned to their main projects. Despite this, the album grew in popularity steadily in the ensuing years, bolstered by the singles "Such Great Heights" and "We Will Become Silhouettes". By the end of its first decade, it had sold 1.2 million copies in the U.S., making it Sub Pop's second-biggest selling album in its history. It also courted a trademark battle with the United States Postal Service and a dispute with Apple. Despite its popularity, Give Up stands as the duo's only studio album. In 2013, the group briefly reunited for an anniversary tour and reissue of the album. In 2023, the band embarked on a 20th anniversary tour.

Background

thumb|left|A promotional photo of Gibbard and Tamborello, shot by Brian Tamborello.

The Postal Service is a collaboration between singer-songwriter Ben Gibbard and electronic musician Dntel (Jimmy Tamborello). Gibbard rose to prominence in the early 2000s as frontman of the indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, while Tamborello gained a cult following as a pioneer of contemporary glitch music and electronica. In 2001, Tamborello released his first album under the Dntel moniker, titled Life Is Full of Possibilities, which features several guest vocalists. The LP featured the duo's first collaboration, with the song "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan". The pair had met through Tamborello's roommate, Pedro Benito, who was in the indie rock group the Jealous Sound, a band that had toured with Death Cab. When Gibbard stayed at their apartment for several days, Tamborello recruited him to contribute to the album.

Gibbard and Tamborello came from distinctly different musical backgrounds, and did not know each other well. Tamborello—then based outside Los Angeles—came up as a member of the electropop band Figurine, with whom he'd released two albums. Gibbard, meanwhile, had released three albums with his indie rock outfit Death Cab, who were based in Seattle, Washington. The band nearly disbanded after an argument on tour in October 2001; after returning home, the group decided to take a brief hiatus, setting the stage for a side-project. Though the pair did not initially connect on a personal level in a strong sense—with Gibbard more sociable and Tamborello often reserved—they continued to collaborate. Gibbard suggested the two release an extended play (EP) of their work.

Tamborello had contacts at famed Seattle-based record label Sub Pop, best known for releasing albums by Nirvana and Sleater-Kinney. Tony Kiewel, who had gone to college with Tamborello, had recently began working for Sub Pop in their A&R division. He proposed that they release a full-length album as opposed to an EP, noting that the former received more attention than the latter. "If you're going to do it, do a full album," he told the duo. "People will review it, and you can sell it for three times as much." The duo signed a joint record deal with Sub Pop, and work on what became Give Up began in earnest in December 2001. Gibbard would then manipulate the recordings on his laptop, augmenting the beats with additional guitar, keyboards, and live drums. Gibbard flew to Los Angeles only twice during the production of the album. The first was to oversee Lewis's contribution, and also record additional vocals. The duo came to feel that Gibbard's original demo vocals were better, and they discarded much of the new vocal takes. Programmed elements are accentuated with acoustic guitars and live drums. Critics compared it to the eighties synthpop and new wave genres. His computer at the time was a Macintosh Quadra, which was not sufficiently powerful enough to record audio with. Tamborello used it as a sequencer, controlling the K2000RS with MIDI. He would program the drum patterns in the computer.

Lyrically, the album touches on themes of love, as well as fame, history, and friendship. Gibbard noted that "District", "Brand New Colony", and "This Place is a Prison" were the only strictly autobiographical songs: "Everything else is just kind of daydreaming and coming up with ideas for songs that aren't necessarily based in reality, and I think that was a lot more fun for me to do because I'd never really done that before," he said in 2002. The split occurred because of how much time Gibbard devoted to music. Afterwards, his former partner relocated to Washington, D.C., which inspired "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight".

"The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" opens with a series of moody, deep-sounding chords designed to emulate the sound of an organ—an edited version of a K2000RS preset called NeoProfit. For Gibbard, the song was a thematic departure from his more melancholy subject matter: "I think 'Such Great Heights' is the first time I've ever written a positive love song," he told Rolling Stone, "where it's a song about being in love and how it's rad, rather than having your heart broken."

"Sleeping In" alludes to Lee Harvey Oswald, the man responsible for assassinating U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Billboard Michael Paolettta broke down that sixty percent of its sales at that time came from retail chains, thirty percent through independent record shops, and the remaining ten percent from "mass merchants and nontraditional sellers."

"Such Great Heights" was the album's first single, released as a physical, four-track CD single in January 2003. The duo both jokingly referred to it as "the hit" of the album when writing it. The disc charted on Billboard Hot 100 Singles Sales chart, a ranking that only measured in-store purchases. Sub Pop offered a free download of the song on their official website, which had been downloaded over nine million times by August 2005; over four million users downloaded the song from the label's MySpace page. In January 2004, influential L.A. radio station KROQ-FM began playing "Such Great Heights", which bolstered the album's popularity. An acoustic rendition of the tune by Iron & Wine aided in boosting its profile; both were simultaneously popular, with Iron & Wine's version used in the film and soundtrack for Garden State, as well as in television advertisements for M&M's. The original version was licensed for commercials for Target, Ask.com, UPS, The song was the original theme song to medical drama Grey's Anatomy, and appears on its first soundtrack. Within two years of its debut, "Such Great Heights" was certified gold for sales of over 500,000 copies by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight", the album's second single, peaked at number 3 on the Hot Dance Singles Sales chart.

The LP did not debut on Billboard all-genre Top 200 Albums chart until thirteen months after its release, which was credited to its slow-building online buzz and licensing in TV commercials. During its initial release, the album peaked at number 114. It spent 111 weeks altogether on the Independent Albums chart, peaking at number three, in total, it logged over 90 weeks on the chart. It was number two album for that chart's year-end ranking for 2004, with Billboard Paoletta characterizing it as "the little album that could." Sales of the album and singles on the nascent iTunes Music Store were high, with Give Up also routinely topping the platform's Top Electronic Albums chart. Domestically, it was a mild crossover hit, peaking at number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 2005. Sub Pop tapped Napoleon Dynamite director Jared Hess to helm the song's music video. Both clips for Give Up attracted rotation on the Fuse network and MTV2's Subterranean.

Over a decade past its release, the RIAA certified the album platinum in the U.S., indicating over one million copies sold. Chris Payne of Billboard considered "a testament to its ongoing popularity and influence." The tenth anniversary reissue of the album reached a new peak of number 45 on the Billboard 200 in April 2013. As of that year, Give Up had sold over 1.1 million units in the United States.

Critical reception

Give Up was generally well received by music critics. It holds a score of 79 out of 100 on review aggregate site Metacritic, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Matt LeMay of Pitchfork called the album "a pretty damned strong record, and one with enough transcendent moments to forgive it its few substandard tracks and ungodly lyrical blunders". Rolling Stone ranked Give Up as the decade's 86th best album.

Touring

The Postal Service—consisting of Gibbard, Tamborello, and Lewis—promoted the 2003 release of Give Up by touring that year. Nick Harmer, bassist of Death Cab for Cutie, joined the trio on the trek, managing the group and the visual accompaniment that was projected behind their performance. Rjyan Claybrook Kidwell, touring under the stage name Cex, was the opening act on the inaugural tour. All five musicians, plus their merchandise manager, toured in one van and slept in one motel room together. Gibbard looked back with humor on touring in such close quarters with people who were largely strangers to him. He acknowledged that with typical bands, touring could sometimes grow tiresome. Instead, he equated the band's initial tour to a honeymoon phase, noting that the six were largely having fun and drinking heavily.

Initially, their booking agent had trouble explaining the project to promoters; Gibbard noted that the only selling points were that it featured members of Death Cab and Rilo Kiley. and Sasquatch! stateside, and Primavera Sound in Spain. Tamborello noted in an interview that the original laptop he had employed in the album's making had over time failed, and he had to piece together the original stems from various external hard drive backups. Gibbard announced that the Lollapalooza after-show, performed at local club the Metro, would be the last Postal Service performance, formally ending the band's career.

The following year, the band released a feature-length documentary concert film titled Everything Will Change, filmed during a stop of the tour in Berkeley, California; a remixed live album of the same name was later issued in 2020. In addition, the Creators Project (a partnership between Intel and Vice) produced a 15-minute documentary on the tour and the album, titled Some Idealistic Future. Give Up represented Sub Pop's second biggest-selling album in its history, only behind Nirvana's Bleach (1989). The Postal Service eclipsed the Shins and Hot Hot Heat as the record label's most popular act in the early aughts.

Though the album was by all accounts immensely successful, Give Up still stands as the Postal Service's only album. From its genesis, its creators intended it as a one-off experiment. Still, Gibbard and Tamborello continued to collaborate in the following years, this time sending their music to one another using the Internet. The duo completed two original songs in 2006—"Turn Around" and "A Tattered Line of String"—before determining the project should remain in the past. Both tracks, and the bulk of the rest of the band's recorded output, feature on a bonus disc of the tenth anniversary reissue of the album. As for the idea of another album in the future, both musicians have considered it unlikely. Gibbard has said that the Give Up captured something special: "It was just this moment that was very inspired and unique."

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Certifications

References

  • Give Up at Sub Pop Records
  • Give Up at Sub Pop Records