It's fitting that the stage set resembles a neon cathedral and the intro tape is church music, because Brixton has come to worship. In 2003 a long-distance collaboration-by-post between Jimmy Tamborello of Dntel and Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard produced Give Up, the one and thus far only album by the Postal Service. One low-key tour and the band was done; the album, however, wasn't. As the most successful melding of indie rock and laptop electronica to date – two genres that had been flirting awkwardly for a decade but never properly getting it on – it grew an avid cult following fascinated by its air of subdued rave romance. Electronica had never sounded so vulnerable, so human.
Ten years on, a second album is so long-awaited they're calling it indie's Chinese Democracy. Instead there's an anniversary rerelease for Give Up, two new songs and this reunion tour, where we can see first-hand why the Postal Service deliver. It's down to immaculate balance; both Tamborello's glitch frenzies and Gibbard's delicate, airy melodies are given equal billing and respect, and each embraces rather than tries to assimilate the other's style.
For Gibbard, most famous for Death Cab's suicide pact anthem I Will Follow You Into the Dark, playing at being Neil Tennant is a rare chance for frivolity. He's driven to itchy bouts of dad dancing by the subway rattles and pounding rave climaxes, duets with a sample of himself on Such Great Heights and occasionally dashes to a drum kit to add beef to the beat. These are also some of his most colourful tunes: We Will Become Silhouettes concerns an airborne virus that makes you explode, Such Great Heights pays tribute to our alien overseers and Nothing Better is a song-row between splitting partners that is performed like a Mensa redraft of Meat Loaf's Dead Ringer For Love, with Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis taking the role of Cher. The swamp noir drips and squelches of This Place Is a Prison provide dark relief, but as Brand New Colony turns the stage into the world's biggest Simon Says machine, TPS prove themselves the full pop package.
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