Death Cab For Cutie share audio from first ever show, tease ninth album

The half-hour recording, taken from their gig at The Pacer House in Bellingham, Washington on 22 November 1997, is pretty fascinating stuff. It features a handful of acoustic numbers, some of which appeared on Death Cab For Cutie's '98 debut Something About Airplanes.

"This is a recording of the first ever Death Cab for Cutie show," explains frontman Ben Gibbard. "It was made by our friend Trevor Adams on his dictaphone... sprawled across couches and sitting crosslegged on the floor were 25 of our closest friends and fellow musicians. Everyone played acoustic or semi-acoustic with no PA. Trevor made and passed bowl after bowl of microwave popcorn because he was (and I assume still is) a great host."

"Chris Walla and I had just finished the You Can Play These Songs With Chords cassette and we thought it would be fun to play a few shows around Bellingham to celebrate the release," continues Gibbard. "We recruited Nick Harmer to play bass and Walla’s childhood friend Nathan Good to play drums. None of us thought we were starting a band nor did our ambitions for DCFC extend very far past this particular evening. We simply thought it would be fun to play these songs for our friends before moving on to other things. I remain forever grateful to Trevor for inviting us to play in his living room 20 years ago today. It was one of the greatest nights of my life at the time and its significance has only grown since."

You can buy the recording for just $4 (or more), with proceeds being donated to The Aurora Commons.

Death Cab For Cutie recently teased LP9, which is apparently gonna be out next year:

LP9 // 2018 pic.twitter.com/doiWjKoOlI

— Death Cab for Cutie (@dcfc) November 17, 2017

Although DCFC haven't released anything since 2015's Kintsugi, Gibbard has been a busy guy, covering Bandwagonesque by Teenage Fanclub and working with the Monkees.