Pitchfork

Chris Leslie-Hynan and Will Bryant report:
If, sometime in April, you should see that handsome red-and-white ambulance from the cover of Dntel's Life Is Full of Possibilities and a bashed-up Checker cab double-parked outside your local indie haunt, chances are The Postal Service is making a delivery in your town. Dntel's Jimmy Tamborello and Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard are taking their play-by-mail collaboration on the interstate for a month of live gigs in support of their debut album, Give Up-- which you just know is gonna lead to some wacky indie-rock road hijinx. Like, remember in Smokey & The Bandit II where they had to steal the elephant and then they found it in the warehouse but the crate it was in was like 10 million feet tall and then it escaped and Burt Reynolds flew onto its back and then got flung off and almost threw his back out? That's the kind of shit we're talking about.

Shut up and pay attention 'cause here comes the boring part: Along for the ride on this limited engagement of lo-fi love-ins will be Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis, who'll be playing Sally Field to Gibbard's bow-legged Jerry Reed on the album, and a "secret fourth member" offstage who'll man the group's elaborate multimedia presentation. "I did some [videos] with the guy who does the visuals for Dntel shows which are home-movie style," Tamborello told Pitchfork at the end of a killer game of Seven Degrees of That Guy with the Shirt. "Then we have some guys doing computer animation. I think we'll use clips from the music video being made for 'Such Great Heights' as well. It's going to be a little bit random and some of it's pretty goofy." Like when Terry Bradshaw flipped over Buford T. Justice's squad car and got berated with racial slurs? Awesome!

The trek will take the intrepid Postal Service field crew through the south, up the east coast's hairy backside, and then across the midwest again before dropping Tamborello back off in L.A. in early May. Along the way, the Postal posse will play a tea room, a ballroom, a cafe, an outhouse, and a magic stick. Don't forget your potassium iodide, boys! Tour dates:

04-04 San Diego, CA - The Casbah
04-05 Tucson, AZ - Solar Culture
04-07 Austin TX - The Mercury
04-08 Dallas, TX - Gypsy Tea Room
04-09 Fayetteville, AR - JR's Lightbulb Club
04-10 St. Louis, MO - Rocket Bar
04-11 Nashville, TN - Slow Bar
04-12 Atlanta, GA - The Earl
04-13 Orlando, FL - The Social
04-14 Carrboro, NC - Go! Rehearsal
04-15 Washington, DC - Black Cat
04-17 Philadelphia, PA - North Star Bar
04-18 Brooklyn, NY - Northsix
04-19 New York NY - Bowery Ballroom
04-20 Cambridge MA - Middle East
04-22 Detroit MI - Magic Stick
04-23 Chicago IL - Abbey Pub
04-24 Milwaukee, WI - Wehr Hall
04-25 Minneapolis, MN - 7th Street Entry
04-26 Omaha, NE - Sokol Underground
04-27 Denver, CO - Bluebird Theater
04-28 Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge
05-01 Seattle, WA - Crocodile Cafe
05-02 Portland, OR - The Blackbird
05-03 Los Gatos, CA - Los Gatos Outhouse
05-04 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill
05-05 Los Angeles, CA - The Echo