Watch Ben Gibbard Cover Neil Young’s “Don’t Cry No Tears”
Benny Gibbs! Back at it again! The Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard started off the quarantine era by playing livestreamed solo shows every day in his home studio, a nice balm when we were all tearing our collective hair out. Gibbard couldn’t keep that pace up forever, and he’s since slowed the shows down, only doing them once a week. But he’s still putting a lot into those shows. Yesterday, Gibbard played for 49 minutes, resurrecting Death Cab classics like “A Movie Script Ending” and “Styrofoam Plates.” And he ended the set by covering a Neil Young song that he’s never covered before.
“Don’t Cry No Tears” is the first song from Zuma, the album that Neil Young made with Crazy Horse in 1975. Zuma came only a few months after Tonight’s The Night, Young’s famously bleak and downcast depths-of-depression record, and it captures the moment that Young started to emerge from his own personal whole. The Zuma song that most people know best is the epic “Cortez The Killer,” but “Don’t Cry No Tears” is a bleary and gorgeous rocker in its own right.
Neil Young has plenty of soft and acoustic songs that Ben Gibbard could cover, and he’s covered at least a few of them before. Gibbard’s version of “Don’t Cry No Tears” changes the song into more of a lullaby, and the song makes the transition just fine, even if Gibbard briefly forgets how it goes in the middle of it. Watch Gibbard’s most recent live set below; the “Don’t Cry No Tears” cover begins at the 46:23 mark. Check out Neil Young and Crazy Horse’s original, too.
I would very much like to own a Spiritualized shirt like the one that Gibbard has on in that video.