The Postal Service - Give Up (LP)

Give Up landed on 18 February 2003 like a love letter that took the long way round. Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie and Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel built it piece by piece from opposite coasts, posting CDRs and song sketches back and forth. The name The Postal Service wasn’t a cute metaphor, it was the workflow. Sub Pop took a punt on a side project that sounded too tender for techno and too synthetic for indie rock, and it became a generational touchstone.

The opener, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, sets the tone with skittering drum programming and a sighing vocal that tumbles into harmonies. It feels like jet lag pressed to wax. Then Such Great Heights arrives with that pinging synth figure and a melody that still sticks like blue tack. There’s a buoyancy to Tamborello’s beats, little syncopated hiccups that keep the songs moving, while Gibbard’s lyrics stare straight at the knot of distance and devotion. The arrangements leave space for air and small gestures. A handclap here, a guitar filigree there. It is meticulous, but never fussy.

The guest vocals matter. Jenny Lewis and Jen Wood slip in like characters in short stories, and Jen Wood’s duet on Nothing Better is the record’s most human tug of war. Two voices trying to rewrite the ending in real time, set against synths that tick like a kitchen clock. Clark Gable deals in cinematic yearning, complete with a sighing hook that would have sounded right at home on a C86 tape if someone had smuggled in a drum machine. Recycled Air floats, all soft pads and muffled announcements. Then This Place Is a Prison cuts through the sweetness with a hungover glare. It is the comedown that keeps the album honest.

We Will Become Silhouettes could have been bleak on paper, yet it shimmers. The tension between bright surfaces and anxious subtext is the record’s trick. It was a big reason Give Up travelled far beyond indie circles. Iron and Wine’s hushed cover of Such Great Heights ended up on the Garden State soundtrack the following year, and the song slipped into cafés, weddings and late night radio. By 2012 the album had gone platinum with the RIAA, only the second Sub Pop release to do so after Nirvana’s Bleach. Not bad for a project that started in the post.

There is a small technical signature to Give Up that still feels fresh. The drum programming is crisp, often dry, and the synth palette leans warm rather than neon. Gibbard’s guitar threads through without announcing itself. You can hear the careful hands of collaborators like Chris Walla, whose additional recording and production help the songs breathe. Nothing here chases club heft. It’s closer to bedroom pop upgraded with craft and curiosity. That’s why it ages well. The tech has moved on, but the songcraft keeps its shine.

The 10th anniversary reissue in 2013 added two new tracks, A Tattered Line of String and Turn Around, and kicked off a victory lap that filled rooms large and small. Those shows made clear something fans had felt for years. Give Up wasn’t a one-off novelty. It was a proper album with legs, the kind you pull out in a flat-share kitchen at 2am to see who sings along. I still catch that first snare patter of The District Sleeps Alone Tonight at record store listening stations and feel the same small thrill.

If you’re crate digging, Give Up vinyl is a rewarding pick. The low end feels a touch rounder on wax and the top end softens in a way that flatters these arrangements. The Postal Service vinyl pressings tend to be well loved in the wild, so a clean copy is worth snapping up. For anyone stocking up on The Postal Service albums on vinyl, this is the spine you want beside your Death Cab favourites. And if you’re hunting from home, you can buy The Postal Service records online through plenty of local shops. I’ve seen tidy copies pop up at a Melbourne record store or two, and the usual suspects in vinyl records Australia have kept the reissue in rotation.

Twenty years on, Give Up still sounds like the kind of indie pop that believed in both circuitry and chemistry. A small miracle assembled by post, sealed with melodies that refuse to fade.