Ben Gibbard, Damien Jurado

[DEATH CABARET] While reports of the imminent solo debut from one, ahem, Benjamin Gibbard would ordinarily trouble only the handful of record clerks charged with cataloging the Death Cab for Cutie frontman’s off-meter dalliances—“Should Former Lives be filed with his main band? With his rather-more-successful Postal Service side project? With his ¡All-Time Quarterback! juvenilia? With his Jay Farrar and Feist collaborations? Should there be a Gibbard section?”—these are the first tunes the indie icon has recorded since returning to Seattle from Los Angeles after 2011’s all-too-public break with Zooey Deschanel, save the faintly genius throwaway anthem “Ichiro’s Theme” thrown to baseball websites following the outfielder’s August trade. Alas, confounding gossip-mongers and longtime fans alike, the resultant genre-skipping collection of odds and ends composed during the past decade embraces an uncomfortable ubiquity ill-fitting a songwriter adored for wringing hummable poignancy from the mundane. 

Where: Crystal Ballroom
Phone: 225-0047
Address: 1332 W Burnside St.
Website: www.mcmenamins.com