Better Oblivion Community Center Covered Death Cab For Cutie

And they somehow made the song sound even sadder than the original.
Better Oblivion Community Center Covered Death Cab For Cutie

And they somehow made the song sound even sadder than the original.

Words: Kim March

photo by Nik Freitas

March 18, 2019

Phoebe Bridgers and Conor Oberst are currently touring for the first time as Better Oblivion Community Center, a supergroup collab between the two tender songwriters. Their self-titled debut album came out in January.

Last night at Seattle’s Showbox theater, the pair covered Death Cab for Cutie’s “Title and Registration” from 2003’s Transatlanticism, an album that recently celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. Oberst’s Bright Eyes and Death Cab were colleagues in the days of 2000s-era emo indie rock, and Death Cab hails from Bellingham in Washington state, not far from Seattle.

RELATED: Death Cab for Cutie Are Summoning the Past to Move Toward the Future

Without their backing band, Bridgers and Oberst duetted the song softly; she strummed her electric guitar while he let his dangle unused, his lips close to the mic. “Title and Registration” is a bitter tune about finding an old lover’s photos in the glove compartment of a car—“souvenirs of better times”—causing all the pre-heartbreak memories to come flooding back.

Watch the Death Cab cover performance below.