Ornament and Crime Give a Little Love to the Postal Service

Bill Delia: One of my favorite albums is Give Up by The Postal Service. The timing of this one hit in that perfect high school / ‘coming-of-age’ era for me, where I’d been playing instruments all my life, but writing and recording songs (and playing in bands) was a relatively new experience. This record felt like it came out of nowhere and was completely different from the other music that inspired me at the time… it had an unusually unique blend of synths, piano, electronic drums, guitars, strings, and incredibly interesting melodies/harmonies. It blew my mind that you could put that many different-sounding instruments together and make it sound so good. Most of all, I was lyrically inspired by Ben Gibbard, and continue to be still to this day. His writing has a way of cutting straight to the heart in a uniquely poetic way, and couldn’t be more honest.

The collaborative nature of the project was also very eye-opening and freeing to me. To this day, I feel like it has opened a lot of doors for my career just by showing what’s possible: that the most important rule is always to chase inspiration when it shows up, and not get bogged down by any traditional restrictions or rules that need to be followed. That’s especially true for me in the present-day, when Alex and I are working on ORNAMENT AND CRIME, but also working on other projects at the same time. We can start any given day working separately on projects, then meet up later in the afternoon and finish up one of our new songs together, and then later that evening do a zoom session with an artist who lives in Europe. It’s a beautiful thing to eliminate the confines that come from only working in one genre of music, and also to eliminate any geographic restrictions that were once a reality of making music… although to be clear, nothing beats creating music in the same studio together all at once.

In summary, Give Up is a beautiful album that continues to be a massive creative influence on my work, and I’d encourage anyone to go back and listen to it again. Because it totally rips.