Ben Gibbard Has No Plans To Record Another Postal Service Album

Ben Gibbard will pull double duty this summer when Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service tour together this summer while celebrating the 20th anniversary of their respective albums, Transatlanticism and Give Up. According to a recent interview with Gibbard, he has no plans to record a follow-up to Give Up, preferring it remain The Postal Service’s only album in their catalog.

Gibbard was interviewed for the Consequence Podcast Kyle Meredith With and spoke extensively about the latest DCFC album, 2022’s Asphalt Meadows. The interview with Meredith also touched on the pending 20th-anniversary tour. Gibbard was asked about the legacy of Give Up, which was remotely recorded with Jimmy Tamborello and released in 2003.

Meredith asked Gibbard if the lack of a second Postal Service album impacted their legacy, and he responded:

Oh, assuredly. And I can kind of speak about it away from my own work. I mean, think about Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel.

This record comes out in 1998. It makes waves amongst a relatively small community of indie rock connoisseurs. And then over the next 25 years or so, you hear people who you never would think would know anything about the “King of the Carrot Flowers” talking about that song or “Oh Comely,” it became … it was one of those records that – and I’m not trying to make a direct parallel to Give Up of course – but it was one of those records that was so good, and it was such a transcendent creative expression, that it just kind of took on a life of its own and found people who necessarily wouldn’t even know about Elephant 6. Right?

And I think that because like Give Up, there hasn’t been a follow-up. It’s allowed, Jeff Mangum and Neutral Milk Hotel as an entity, to remain this kind of mythic – it’s given it a mythic quality. It’s shrouded in mystery: “You know, why hasn’t there been another record? What’s he doing right now? I heard from a friend who knows somebody who knows him and he was working on something. He was at a studio.” It takes on this air of mystery and romance. There’s certainly just less of that with The Postal Service, but I’m sure there are people out there who get a little whisper of something and they go like, “oh, somebody texted somebody who said that Jimmy and Ben were having coffee. That must mean…” whatever it might be.

It’s kind of fun to be a part of that in my own life because you realize that so much of the mystery that surrounds – I know Neutral Milk Hotel is not a one-and-done, but for all intents and purposes, let’s just kind of call it a one-and-done, or The Laws or whatever kind of group that had one record and just disappeared — it’s really interesting, at least in our case, to be a part of the other side of that and realize, no, we just didn’t wanna do it again. We tried and it just wasn’t that much fun. So we decided why, why do another one? …

Anybody who’s been wanting a second Postal Service album, really ask yourself after 20 years, do you really think that there’s gonna be something that we could make that could even, satisfy half of the desire you have in your mind as to what this record would be like?

20 years, a lot of technology has changed. A lot of how we make music has changed dramatically since then. It wouldn’t be the same. I think often when we think about the music that we love the most and the eras of a certain artist for a band that we love the most, we’re as much thinking about the sound. It’s not just the songs. It’s just not how you remember how you were driving around in high school listening to it, wishing you could be anywhere else than the town you’re living in. It’s the sound of it. And whatever we would make now would sound dramatically different than what we made 20 years ago. And I think it would be a disappointment even if we tried.

Death Cab For Cutie and The Postal Service’s tour commences in Portland, Maine on September 8. Watch Gibbard’s appearance on Kyle Meredith With below: