Death Cab for Cutie & The Postal Service at Ameris Bank Amphitheatre [Photos]

Last week, Ben Gibbard pulled double-duty in Atlanta during Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service’s co-headlining American tour. Both of Gibbard’s bands have been celebrating the 20th anniversary of Transatlanticism and Give Up, respectively, and the triumphant show has been nothing but a resounding success for multiple generations of fans of both bands.

Paste editor-in-chief Josh Jackson recently wrote about his experience at show, most especially how both sets evoked a nostalgia for the early days of this magazine. “I’m certain I wasn’t the only one transported to a very specific time and place in my life, and the venue actually got louder whenever a song ended and the audience roared their approval,” he wrote. “It’s just that indie rock in those first years of the new millennium was very un-danceable. Ben Gibbard and company hardly moved on stage, and the crowd followed suit, even during the relative bop of ‘Sound of Settling.’ At indie rock shows in 2003, we didn’t sit and we didn’t dance. We stood nearly motionless and cheered politely between songs.”

“But if my body was still, my mind was racing during songs like “The New Year,” ‘Title and Registration’ and ‘Passenger Seat.’ This was the music of every late-night drive at a time when we were just getting Paste off the ground,” he continued. “I was older than the typical Death Cab for Cutie fan at 31, a father of young kids and husband to a wife who was getting tired of my absence. I’d poured so much of my energy—and increasingly my identity—into this new venture, and as much as I was basking in the response it had gotten, I was starting to sense that more important things were slipping away. When the band played the title track, and Gibbard began pleading, over and over, ‘I need you so much closer,’ I was reminded again, by one of rock’s truest romantics, just who in my life has brought me the most joy, and felt immense gratitude. Music doesn’t have to make you dance to make you feel, and Death Cab had us all in our feels.”

See photos of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, captured by Donny Evans, below.