Ben Gibbard And Jay Farrar Contemplate Kerouac In Seattle

The evening began with a short but stellar set by Long Winters frontman John Roderick.

It can often be claimed that Roderick's talent goes criminally underrated, but this hometown crowd quickly fell silent as he started off with a solo version of "Shapes" from the second Winters' album, When I Pretend To Fall.

Roderick followed this up with a mishmash of songs from the Winters' four album discography including "Carparts," "Hindsight," "Mimi," "Pushover," "When I Pretend To Fall" and fan favourite "Cinnamon." The audience was also treated to a new song titled "Not Moving To Portland" from the forthcoming Winters' release.

Despite playing an all-too-brief set, the song choices spanned the Winters' discography, and with just a guitar and impressive vocal range, Roderick delivered a performance well worth the price of admission alone.

Ben Gibbard and Jay Farrar's musical collaboration isn't particularly obvious. The former juggles the responsibilities of being an indie rock icon with being the object of desire for New Moon soundtrack fans. The latter is a longtime alt-.try player that helped define his genre.

Yet despite their diversity, the two complement each other nicely. Gibbard's voice dances around the upper register and adds a nice dynamic to Farrar's gravelly low-end tones on the shared choruses. Both players are also adept guitarists and keyboardists and switch-hit instruments between songs to back each other up.

Touring material from their recent album One Fast Move Or I'm Gone, the thematic elements of each song draw elements from Jack Kerouac's autobiographical Big Sur novel. The album was written as the soundtrack to a recent film documentary of the same name.

In the book, Kerouac battles isolation, alcoholism and undesired fame. The author journeys to a friend's cabin in the woods of Big Sur, Calif. and attempts to achieve sobriety and rejuvenate his troubled spirit.

Drawing from this material, the songs on the Farrar/Gibbard album are a similar mix of emotion with a propensity towards deep description, much like Kerouac's own writing.

They opened the show with the first three tracks of the album. Gibbard channeled a contemplative Kerouac rolling across the wilderness by train in "California Zephyr" (his sole songwriting credit on the album). Farrar then took up vocal duties on "Low Life Kingdom," a song strongly reflective of his typical alt.country vocal/ guitar style.

Gibbard then regained the vocal reigns for the hauntingly beautiful "City And Sur (Willamine)" which echoed the feelings of lovelorn-emptiness so often contemplated in the latter pages of Big Sur.

They went on play the balance of tracks from the album, including "Big Sur," "Final Horrors," "Sea Engines," "One Fast Move Or I'm Gone" and "These Roads Don't Move." Much of this Farrar-written material deals with heavy subject matter, but the performance was an enlightening experience when delivered with such solid musicianship.

They wrapped their set with "Voodoo Candle" and briefly departed before returning for the first of two encores. If anything special was going to happen tonight, now would be the time. Would they cover a Death Cab song? Perhaps Son Volt, or maybe even some classic Uncle Tupelo material?

Farrar returned first and did a knockout solo version of "San Francisco." The full band then kicked into the classic Farrar song "Feel Free" and followed up with Death Cab For Cutie's "You Remind Me Of Home."

Then came the unpredictable element. They wrapped up the first encore with the Tom Waits' "Old Shoes (& Picture Postcards)," a song steeped in Kerouac's influence.

The band then returned for encore number two with the song "Absolutely Sweet Marie" from Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde.

If Kerouac was looking down from above, surely this performance would make him consider switching from his jazz and bebop leanings to alt-country. This performance might not be one that will happen often, but it will certainly be long remembered by those in attendance.