Yesterday, a cryptic pre-announcement from the verified Twitter account for The Postal Service hinted at new music from the band for the first time since a loose 2013 single, which at the time served as the band’s first new music in a decade. Like, what else has a contextless date ever meant coming from a band’s social media?
This morning we didn’t wake up to new tunes from Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello, but we did get something interesting: a new star-studded audition tape hosted over Zoom. Joining B.G., J.T., collaborator Jenny Lewis, and “Dave from Sub Pop” is a very mixed bag of recognizable faces, including labelmates J Mascis, Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords), Ismael Butler (Shabazz Palaces), and Pres Hall Jazz Band, other members of the indie-rock elite including Japanese Breakfast, Caroline Polachek, and Tunde Adebimpe, household-name rockers Slash, Rick Springfield, Weird Al, and Huey Lewis, comedians Patton Oswalt, Tim Robinson, Vanessa Bayer, and Aparna Nancherla, and—why not—Anne Hathaway.
So as to round out the lineup of “three dorks bopping around on stage,” “Dave” (comedian Jon Daly) interviews a handful of celebs for a role in the trio’s backing band for a massive, maskless tour to get the word out about voting (Ben Gibbard is skeptical). Tour or no tour, the audition tape effectively got our attention, which the band hopes to redirect to HeadCount to ensure everyone’s registered to vote in the upcoming election—specifically their Make Your Vote Count initiative, which helps voters successfully navigate mail-in voting.
Watch the full twenty-minute clip below.
