Updated 10:28 p.m., Sept. 22
Death Cab for Cutie will headline the A&O fall show at the Riviera Theater in Chicago in what an A&O official said will be “the biggest fall show since Kanye West.”
A little more than 2,000 students will be able to attend the Oct. 10 show, which will cost $15 per ticket for undergraduates and $20 for graduate students. So Many Dynamos will be the supporting band. Tickets go on sale Sept. 29.
“This is a big scoop for us,” said Barry McCardel, A&O’s co-director of promotions and public relations.
Death Cab for Cutie, an indie-rock band based in Seattle, saw their sixth and latest album, Narrow Stairs, debut at number one on the Billboard 200 in May. The quartet has built a wide fanbase over more than a decade, with tracks featured prominently in TV shows like The OC and single “Soul Meets Body” spending 18 weeks in the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Usually melodic and mid-tempo, the band’s music is occasionally pegged as “emo,” with Rolling Stone writing in 2004 that frontman Ben Gibbard (who also sings for electro-pop duo The Postal Service) is “more sensitive than almost any of his studiously introspective peers.”
Since forming in 2002, St. Louis quartet So Many Dynamos has released two full-length albums of noisy punk rock anchored by twitchy dance rhythms. Their concerts have been known to induce sweat-soaked gyrating; the Riverfront Times recently wrote that the group had a “brain-bending, super-energetic live show.”
According to Weinberg senior Forrest Wickman, Director of Concerts for A&O, the production company has been looking to book Death Cab for Cutie to come perform for quite some time.
“We came to think they’d be the best option for this show,” Wickman said. “This is going to be the biggest fall show since Kanye West.”
While many schools hire a middle agent to get in touch with the agent of the band, A&O students contact the band’s agent directly in order to gain more experience. They then negotiate with the agent to find the best time and location for the show.
When tickets go on sale, students will be able to buy four tickets per WILDCard, and bring one WILDCard per person.