Death Cab for Cutie Aren’t Bored Yet
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The post Death Cab for Cutie Aren’t Bored Yet appeared first on Consequence.
During a recent phone call with Consequence, Ben Gibbard drops the totally unanticipated fact that he loves 100 gecs. “I’m completely obsessed with them,” he gushes about the polarizing hyperpop duo. “At 46 years old, there’s music that I should be scared of. It’s awesome that there’s music being made now that I have absolutely no idea how to make.”
Being 46 also means Gibbard has spent over half his life as the frontman of Death Cab for Cutie, whose great 10th studio album Asphalt Meadows is out Friday (September 16th). Maybe it shouldn’t be shocking that he’s so enamored by 100 gecs, who sound a bit like what shotgunning five cans of Red Bull while on Adderall might feel like: Whether it’s collaborating with heavyweights like Chance the Rapper and Noah Cyrus, helming a Yoko Ono tribute album, being the pandemic’s most consistent livestreamer, or casually running 100-mile races, Gibbard’s typical mentality seems to be go, go, go in varying degrees of intensity.
“I think we’ve always put a lot of pressure on ourselves to stay productive, and stay working, and stay active,” bassist Nick Harmer tells Consequence in a separate call. “We’ve always felt that if we weren’t, we were somehow taking it too easy.”
So when COVID-19 sequestered the members of Death Cab — which, these days, also includes drummer Jason McGerr and guitarists/keyboardists Dave Depper and Zac Rae — Gibbard came up with a songwriting plan. Each Monday, one member had the day to write the beginning of a song. Tuesday morning, he’d pass it along to another member, who had full creative liberty over the song-in-progress until the next day.
This round-robin method would continue throughout the weekdays until, like a game of creative telephone, Friday would result in a completed Death Cab song. “We thought, ‘Let’s add some structure to a structureless life,'” Harmer says.
Somewhere along the nearly two years of writing remotely this way, the band found the 11 tracks that would comprise Asphalt Meadows, an album that feels exactly like what Death Cab should ideally sound like 25 years since their formation: At once familiar and like nothing they’ve done before.
The record opens with “I Don’t Know How I Survive,” a mid-tempo ode to anxious, sleepless nights that begins with complex, layered guitar riffs before suddenly erupting at the bombastic chorus. As Gibbard sings the song title over a surge of fuzz, you can hear how that seemingly militant songwriting schedule allowed him to tap into a new part of himself.
“I didn’t feel like I was in a rut, per se, but I wanted some different kind of harmonic information to work with,” he says. “When I’m playing guitar or piano, my hands tend to go to similar places on an instrument, which might dictate a melody that I’ve written before, and that might inform a lyric I’ve written before. So with this process, I thought of it as a way to shake up primarily how we wrote and arranged music in the band, which can be very beneficial for the record. We wanted to prove that we can get to some different places.”
Harmer concurs: “I feel like giving people space to explore their own creative impulses without the fear that can come from group dynamics unlocked some ideas that we wouldn’t have had if we were all in a room. I think the only question along the way was, are we making something that’s good or interesting? Quickly, we realized that we were really enjoying the results.”
Death Cab for Cutie wrote Asphalt Meadows entirely remotely, but came together in person to record with studio wiz John Congleton between Seattle and Los Angeles. Congleton, who’s almost certainly worked with one of your favorite bands before, also helped the band from overthinking the process.
“As a producer, he was able to get us out of our perfectionist head streak sometimes where we get really obsessed with the minutiae,” Harmer says. “Every once in a while, when somebody in the band was like, ‘I don’t know about that performance. I don’t know if that’s good or bad,’ he would turn around in his chair and go, ‘It sounds like music.'”
From the macabre, plaintive Narrow Stairs to the pop-forward Thank You for Today, Death Cab have tried on a lot of hats since their 2003 breakout Transatlanticism. Asphalt Meadows wraps up the longest stretch of time Death Cab have ever taken between studio albums, and possibly as a result, it contains some of Gibbard’s most introspective lyrics in years. “Walking in place where you don’t belong/ Here on paved native lands/ Time disappears from the palms of your hands,” he sings on the dreamy, sinuous “Fragments From the Decade.”
While the line “fragments from the decade are splayed out on your floor” might refer to literal photographs, Gibbard and Harmer have learned to embrace their past records as snapshots of all their previous eras.
“You might see a high school yearbook photo, and you’re like, ‘I can’t believe I wore that shirt and I thought it was cool,'” Gibbard says. “But if you’re judging everything that you said or did or wore in the context of what is cool now, or what what you like now, or the specific kind of music you want to make now — yeah, there might be some things that make you cringe a little bit, but at the end of the day, there are people who love those records and they mark time in people’s lives who are fans of the band. That’s what’s really important.”
Speaking of being cool, Gibbard’s not interested in it. “I’ve given up on aspiration/ And I’ve given up on ever being cool,” he sings on the sweeping, synth-heavy closer “I’ll Never Give Up on You.”
“I always felt like I was on the outside looking in on whatever the ‘cool camp’ was,” he says. “But I think that was also partially because I’m not a joiner. But I guess when you’re young, and you’re trying to find yourself and your identity, you probably haven’t done or made a lot. So you define yourself by the things you like, rather than who you are.
“As I’ve been able to do this for a living and be recognized for it, the less concerned I am about making creative decisions based on maintaining relevancy.”
Which is why, as much as he’s embraced contemporary mainstream pop, Gibbard won’t ever even attempt to make a record that sounds like 100 gecs: “Nobody would think that was cool. People want us to be us. I think that one of the most pathetic things that an older musician can do is to try to co-op whatever style of music is popular at that time.” (Although he does agree that a 100 gecs remix of Death Cab would be fun to hear.)
Harmer is the only other current member of Death Cab who’s been in the band since Gibbard expanded it from a solo project in 1997. When asked how he’s been able to maintain such a tight creative relationship with Gibbard for over two decades, he sighs, and apologizes in advance for the clichés.
“Whenever you talk to anyone that’s been in any kind of relationship for a long time — friendships, romantic relationships, business relationships — a lot of people would say it really comes down to communication,” Harmer says. “I think there’s a natural tendency in people to focus on their own stuff, their own lives, their own things. I don’t mean that in a selfish, lame way, but over time I think it becomes harder to stay in good communication with people outside of yourself. You have to work at it. We’re all lucky to have that type of friendship that doesn’t take much maintenance — those really cherished kinds of friendships are rare.”
“I think that at the at the core of this band — and this includes people who are no longer in the band — we all care about each other’s well-being, and we’re each other’s biggest fan,” Gibbard agrees. “I think I can say for everybody in the band that this is exactly what we always wanted to do. This is the band we always wanted to be in. The older I get, the longer we do this, the more fortunate and grateful I am for the fact that we get to do it at all, but especially at the level that we’re able to do it, and that people still care. I still love the music. You don’t always realize that that’s an incredible honor.”
Catch Death Cab for Cutie on tour; tickets are available via Ticketmaster.
Asphalt Meadows Artwork:
Death Cab for Cutie Aren’t Bored Yet
Abby Jones
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