The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (Deluxe Anniversary Edition)

Song Exploder

Hrishikesh Hirway

Music

4.8 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The first episode of Song Exploder, about The Postal Service song "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight," came out 10 years ago, in January 2014. To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the podcast, we're doing what bands do, and putting out a deluxe, expanded edition of our very first release: this version features a new interview, new insights, and new pieces of the song and demo.

The Postal Service formed in 2001. Their debut album came out in 2003, and it was a game changer. Their combination of electronic music and indie rock not only sold over a million copies; their songs were everywhere on TV and in film, and influenced a generation of artists. Last year, they played sold-out concerts across the US in celebration of the 20th anniversary of the album, and there are more shows to come in 2024. A few weeks ago, I spoke to Ben Gibbard, and I combined that with my original interview from 2013 with Jimmy Tamborello. And here, together, the two of them tell the story of how they made their song “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight.”

For more, visit songexploder.net/postal-service-deluxe.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to song-exploder where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirway
0:10.4	Somewhere around the end of 2012 I started daydreaming about song
0:14.8	exporter as a vague idea. A show where you could hear the inner workings of a song
0:20.1	and the ideas that went into making all the different parts.
0:24.0	I finally decided to try and make some kind of pilot episode in the spring of 2013.
0:30.0	I'd never interviewed somebody before, but I asked my friend Jimmy Tamborello if he would be up for letting me try this concept with him.
0:37.5	We'd known each other for years at that point. We'd gone on tour together and I've been a huge fan of his music for a long time.
0:44.5	He makes music under the name Dintel and he's one half of the band, The Postal Service,
0:48.3	along with Ben Gibbard.
0:50.0	They were just getting ready to go on tour to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their album
0:54.3	Give Up.
0:55.5	And so Jimmy had already been working with the different stems of their songs to get ready for
1:00.4	playing them live.
1:02.0	So one day I went to his home studio in LA and we sat together
1:06.0	in front of his computer and he played me different parts of my favorite Postal Service song,
1:10.3	The District Sleeps Alone Tonight, and I tried to explain what my idea was and what I wanted to get out of the interview
1:16.2	Like let's listen to the song and then you point out things that you hear to me. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Like this, I've never heard this stuff.
1:25.0	Yeah, that's just all the bass parts together.
1:29.0	That would be awesome, they'll do that, but I think that.
1:31.0	Yeah, I could play those.
1:33.0	The synth parts.
1:35.0	Yeah, the synth.
	...

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