Death Cab For Cutie Albums From Worst To Best
The January announcement that the Postal Service would be reuniting for this year’s Coachella has been followed by snowballing PS news: a Give Up reissue, the celebration of the album’s 10-year anniversary, a full reunion tour, replete with album guest Jenny Lewis. As such, it’s the rare indie-rock enthusiast who is not plagued with Ben Gibbard On The Brain. But 2013 is not just a big year for Gibbard’s digital side project. In October, Death Cab For Cutie’s Transatlanticism turns a decade old. That album is arguably the record that transformed DCFC from Barsuk all-stars into a band able to headline the Theater At Madison Square Garden. Whether it was the title track’s placement on HBO’s macabre highbrow soap opera Six Feet Under, Seth Cohen of The O.C.‘s unadulterated obsession with the group, or countless other contributing factors, that album catapulted the band to much higher levels of awareness, and it serves as a milemarker for Death Cab’s sea change.
There’s always been a relative polish to what Death Cab does. Even on their debut full-length, Something About Airplanes, Gibbard and Co. proved they knew how to finesse luster out of lo-fi, and from there, only increasingly found ways to shine. Their music deals with a lot of weighty emotional issues — feeling like a stranger in your own home, the plundering of familial connections, and heartbreak after heartbreak after heartbreak — but their tracks tend toward anthemic with a dearth of sonic negativity.
To not rest on sad music for sad subjects is completely natural for a band who named themselves after a song by Elvis-On-Psychedelics act the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. It’s one of the facets of the group that endears them to so many — Gibbard’s detailed, sometimes tragic lyrics combined with Chris Walla’s billowing clarity on guitar, and the lulling yet driving percussion. It’s that cocktail that makes the Death Cab icons, and not just another indie rock band.
The excellence of their output isn’t relegated to their seven studio full-lengths, as the band also put out a number of impressive EPs and a collection of B-sides, rarities, etc., You Can Play These Songs With Chords. In honor of the Postal Service’s reunion tour, which kicks off April 9 at the Grand Sierra Theatre in Reno, NV, we’ll take a look at Ben Gibbard’s “other” band — but only the Studio Seven. It’s worth noting, though, that “Photobooth” from The Forbidden Love EP and “State Street Residential” from Chords arguably belong a 10 Best Songs list.
7. Codes And Keys (2011)
Codes And Keys was the last time we heard from Death Cab and it seemed they were beginning to suffer from exhaustion. When you never cease evolving your sound (and props to the group for the continued drive to grow), it is not uncommon to hit a rough patch. Codes And Keys is a great departure from the band's static-laden origin point, influenced heavily by Brian Eno, according to the band. If the intention was to sound like an Eno record, then the band failed; if it was to approach the songwriting and recording processes with innovation, then they get an honorable-mention ribbon. What the album really sounds like is Death Cab implementing bits of previous recordings through the lens of a failed experiment. With opening track "Home Is A Fire," there are hints of what listeners love about Death Cab -- deliberate melodics, Gibbard as a soothsayer of tough emotions, but presented with an unsettling jitteriness, like a nervous plagiarist. It's the theme of the album. A track like "Monday Morning" recalls Death Cab of the past but with a gloss of newness (in this case, vocal effects) that feel slike an unnecessary advancement given Gibbard's vocal prowess. It's also their least lyrically impressive effort, the writing tending toward the anthemic instead of their usual illustrative work. That a song called "You Are A Tourist" is its biggest hit is at once telling, not necessarily in a good way for longtime listeners of the band.
6. Narrow Stairs (2008)
If Keys And Codes is Death Cab's exhaustion album, Narrow Stairs displayed the onset of fatigue. Imagine, if you would, that this album were a Death Cab For Cutie Fan Choose Your Own Adventure, and the objective was to find the new sound the band would tackle as they moved forward. The options were numerous: You had "Pity And Fear" for continental tourism laid over Western sparseness. If you're looking for festival generics, "Grapevine Fires" delivers. And those who like their rock songs long and jammy, "I Will Possess Your Heart" does the trick. All of these things could have been finessed into brighter versions of themselves, although "Possess" still feels deeply in the canon, especially if you imagine it without the clanging piano. "Cath..." feels indebted to '90s power-pop band Gin Blossoms, but still beams with the most Death Cab-iness on the album. Gibbard's vocals are layered for emphasis, Walla riffs like it's 1998, and a devastating narrative about a nervous bride who's broken her vows before she even got a chance to say them plays over the whole thing.
5. Plans (2005)
Plans: platinum-certified, Grammy-nominated, and it truly feels like an indie band's major-label debut. The band parted ways with Barsuk in 2004, albeit with blessings from its founder Josh Rosenfeld and the rest of the label, not to mention an arrangement to continue releasing vinyl via the indie. Transatlanticism was Death Cab's first record to crack the Billboard 200, peaking impressively at 97, so the transition made sense. But Plans was not a complete departure from the Death Cab sound. "Your Heart Is An Empty Room" and singles "Soul Meets Body" and "Crooked Teeth" polished the increasing levels of gloss a little bit brighter, yet dulled the spirit of their riffs, with Walla going a bit more mainstream. Pop leanings should have come as no surprise, as the Postal Service's Give Up had become Sup Pop's best-selling record since Nirvana's Bleach. The influence is clear on a track like "Different Names For The Same Thing," which mutates from ambling rock into popcorn-kernel bursts of synths a la the Postal Service's "Natural Anthem." Their spirit remains intact on acoustic ditty "I Will Follow You Into The Dark," featuring Gibbard's narrative poetry, replete with romantic morbidity.
4. Something About Airplanes (1998)
Something About Airplanes is music by the best band playing your small liberal-arts college. It doesn't matter that this came out in a heightened period of bands working in standard indie-rock tropes (Built To Spill, Modest Mouse, etc.), the sound is still relevant. But you're full of growing pains in college, and this album has them, too. There are clear indications that the quartet might grow to become impeccable songwriters -- and the aural contributions are a lot to write home about, in song-structure, the invaluable innovation from standard-issue Pacific Northwest sound, and Gibbard's taffy-malleable yet still impenetrable voice. There's a thinness, however, to tracks like "President Of What?," "Bend To Squares," and "Pictures In An Exhibition" (Note: Many tracks that appear on Airplanes can be found on You Can Play These Songs With Chords, and those earlier versions are better because of their grittiness), and Death Cab excels most when their music has more muscle to it. As the album drifts toward its close, songs "The Face That Launched 1000 Shits" and "Fake Frowns" begin to make it a more robust product, the textures foreshadowing more concentrated music to come.
3. Transatlanticism (2003)
As discussed in the introduction, Transatlanticism feels like the album that ushered in a new crop of Death Cab fans, so it's only fitting that that the album starts with a track called "The New Year." It's a clear ascension from the scraggiliness of their debut album Something About Airplanes, but feels quintessentially Death Cab, even with its production sheen. "Title And Registration" fits into the band's legacy of off-kilter song names; it's also the album's brightest moment. It displays Gibbard's ability to take arbitrary small talk and mutate it into an anecdote about a revelatory experience. Rarely does an artist so effectively explore that A-to-B-to-Z thought process. Here, you've discovered a photograph from a failed relationship but in the turbulent nostalgia-flood, the electricity in your busy brain trips a wire -- the memory of your old love dissolves and you're wondering why the fuck the bay above your passenger seat floor is called a "glove compartment" when it's meant to hold paperwork, not accessories. And they do it again with "Tiny Vessels." And again with "We Looked Like Giants" and "A Lack Of Color." It's honest, it's brutal, it's brilliant.
2. The Photo Album (2001)
One of the things that makes Death Cab so great is their ability to express something via a sound that has nothing to do with the emotion it's conveying. We call it a pathetic fallacy when things just can't get any worse and someone chimes in, "Well, at least it's not raining," but then the clouds part and all downtrodden parties are left soaking wet. The Photo Album has many instances that are so anti-pathetic fallacy, it's a wonder if casual listeners even know that "Why You'd Want To Live Here" is actually one of the most vitriolic anti-L.A. anthems, even as it sonically personifies the place it ultimately tears down -- "The Only Place" it is not. "Styrofoam Plates" is a song about telling off your dad that deals in no angry musical tropes, yet at the same time, its nonchalance is the perfect embodiment of refusing to show it hurts. "We Laugh Indoors," arguably the best song on this album, manages to be thick and empty at the same time. And while that is precisely how one feels while kicking trash on the sidewalk over unrequited love, its urgency is transcendent. This was the first real indication that the band was going to toy with their signature sound, and while some of it meanders ("Information Travels Faster"), it's a marathon-runner -- satisfyingly Death Cab while still ahead of its time.
1. We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes (2000)
We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes bends and breaks. It builds itself only to fall flat in its own languid misery ("Company Calls" and "Company Calls Epilogue"). It represses its anguish and adorably shrugs at responsibility ("405"). If Death Cab albums were novels, then this one is a post-coming-of-age, broke-but-what, why-do-my-hangovers-last-until-3-p.m. tome about the awkward bit of your mid-twenties when you first realize you're not as smart as you think you are, but have absolutely no idea what to do about it. From its opener, "Title Track," a song about nostalgia, wish-fulfillment, and questionable decisions, we're given the mission statement. There's youth-euphoria and clear improvement from Airplane's lack of polish that would ultimately define the band. The record ascends from an emotional middle ground -- not a high or a low, just a place of figuring it out until the feelings collapse on themselves at "Epilogue." There, the record takes a turn for the morose, bled of confidence at "No Joy In Mudville," yet distinctly beautiful with its bells and barren soundscape. It's the most complete journey offered by any Death Cab record, and that's what makes it so wholly satisfying. When you examine their catalogue in its entirety, Facts presents the quintessential Death Cab, because here they've carved out their trademark sound and are probably most present in the despondency they do so well. It's why the album's third cut, "For What Reason," just might be the best song in their catalogue. While the band crafts catchy, jangly precision that glitters, it's bloodthirsty. Gibbard sings, "This won't be the last you hear from me, it's just the start/ I hope that he keeps you up for weeks, like you did to me" sweetly as ever, but the viciousness shines through. The brightest smile is made up of the tightest-clenched teeth.
