Death Cab for Cutie, who has teased the release of a new album in 2018, has released a first ever live recording. This is the first time of performance since 1997.

Twenty years ago, the band went on stage at a acoustic house in Bellingham, Washington, with 25 people as the audience as reported by Bandcamp. In the weekend before Thanksgiving in 1997, the frontman Ben Gibbard had recently finished a demo of You Can Play These Songs With Chords. According to SPIN, Gibbard wrote a note about the song saying “None of us thought we were starting a band nor did our ambitions for DCfC extend very far past this particular evening. We simply thought it would be fun to play these songs for our friends before moving on to other things.”

The recording was made by the show host Trevor Adams with the audience noise in the background. In a Facebook post, Gibbard posted saying that this was a recording from that day and continuing by saying “Chris Walla and I had just finished the You Can Play These Songs with Chords cassette and we thought it would be fun to play a few shows around Bellingham to celebrate the release. We recruited Nick Harmer to play bass and Walla’s childhood friend Nathan Good to play drums. None of us thought we were starting a band nor did our ambitions for DCfC extend very far past this particular evening. We simply thought it would be fun to play these songs for our friends before moving on to other things.” He ends the post with being grateful that Trevor Adams invited them to play. The recording can be heard below.