IN A recent era we sought Death Cab for Cutie in hole-in-the-wall clubs, a time period also known as “college” or “before our moms started listening” or “before they became the quintessential date-and-makeout concert.” The band’s music has explored (the mopey-beautiful Transatlanticism, the melodic, mainstream-friendly but tightly written Plans) but hardly wavered in quality. The only thing that’s changed is who is going to see Death Cab and where—namely, people comfortably over 25 at cavernous venues like Radio City Music Hall. Perhaps Ben Gibbard’s crew needed a five-star stage to make some gesture of competition with Madonna’s four-day epic camp-out at Madison Square Garden just a few blocks away (even fewer if you count bars like Stout, which devoted the full attention of its massive screens and deafening sound system to Madonna’s first show last night).

While Death Cab’s records haven’t suffered from the band’s age and exposure, the live experience has begun to wear. (Unlike Madonna’s vocal prowess and dancing skills, judging by the few minutes I caught). Stretched over too many seats and crowded with too many fan favorites that need to be jammed into a two-hour set, Death Cab’s show feels far more mechanical than it should. Gibbard’s lyrics have no room to breathe, his singing has no space to rise and fall, and, most of all, the band is forced to go louder than most of its catalog should be played. While Death Cab has always made plenty of stage-ready rock songs, they tend to play even their pin-drop heartbreak numbers with same monochromatic intensity (and Gibbard manically, incessantly shifting his weight side to side).

Take for example, “You Heart Is An Empty Room,” a gentle, lilting ballad from Plans, the recorded version of which packs a good bit of unexplored tension. Rather than draw out the song’s passive-aggressive palette on stage, Gibbard began it more like a jam, with lots of jutty strumming, then let it swell into a rocker with choppy singing and far too much fuzz. On Plans, unhurried acoustic guitar lifts the plaintive lyrics like the wispy plume of smoke they describe. There, it is stately and dignified, two qualities that made no appearance in the overwrought version Death Cab played two songs into last night’s set. The one ballad Gibbard consistently executes live is “I Will Follow You Into The Dark,” another Plans highlight that features him on solo acoustic guitar (and one of the many aspects of the Death Cab show that remains unaltered from the last time I saw them).

The few Narrow Stairs songs, clustered together near the middle of the set, showed Death Cab at its best. The extended instrumental opening of “I Will Possess Your Heart,” a classic case of the band recording a boring version of an exciting stage jam, came to life as a gritty, gripping three minutes of layered rock music. A decent if uninspiring rendition of “Long Division,” a Death Cab song loud enough for a room as large as Radio City, was one of only five songs from Narrow Stairs to make the lineup (“Bixby Canyon Bridge” was the pre-encore closer; “Pity and Fear” was conspicuously absent).

A band’s on-stage twilight is apparent when fans would rather hear the “classics” than new material. Whether or not that’s the case for Death Cab, the set list certainly read like it is—a heavy portion of Plans, with equal parts Photo Album and Transatlanticism, with less than a fourth of the show devoted to the album they’re supposedly promoting. Death Cab likely has many good years left to be lived and many good records left to be recorded. If they don’t want to slide into an overblown light-rock experience with a perennially dependable set list, it’s time for the Gibbard foursome to change the pace: scale down the venue size and get back to playing lyric-driven songs to sad people ten feet away. Then, maybe every show might not feel like a lethargic victory lap.

Death Cab for Cutie, “Marching Bands of Manhattan”

Click here to see more Patrol video from the show.