UPBEAT Music Reviews

by John Mundazio with additional writing by Bridget Petrella

It only took six albums, three EPs, countless singles, four or five record labels, a much-adored side project, numerous guest productions, and a thoroughly boring solo LP to get to this point, but Death Cab for Cutie will end 2008 as a big-font festival band. And yet, though their sound has grown increasingly muscular, and their outdoor sets tend to only reach as far back as "We Laugh Indoors", they still seem ill-suited to those wide-open spaces. As I sat and watched two high out of their minds, shirtless, thirty something acid-trip casualties make out during Coachella while a rickety version of "Soul Meets Body" played in the distance, it just seemed to go against everything Death Cab has come to stand for. In other words, they still manage to carry themselves like a small band from a tiny Washington college town. Upon re-release, the most striking aspects about Death Cab's debut, Something About Airplanes, were how modest it sounded and how removed it was from the Modest Mouse/Built to Spill template of the Pacific Northwest. If there was any resemblance to their regional forefathers, it was in their ability to create a sonic blueprint that's subtly innovative. Few were writing lyrics— formed almost as complete sentences and melodically structured the same— like Death Cab's Ben Gibbard at the time. The bridge of "President of What?" sounds like it's taking the wrong step with each chord turn, moving in an opposite direction to the melody, but the resolution makes complete sense: "Nothing hurts like nothing at all/ When imagination takes full control."

In a strikingly candid interview with Paste magazine, Gibbard admitted that he goes back to this record and rarely has any idea what he was talking about. While it's typical for a lyricist to embrace straightforwardness in his later years, recent tracks like "You Can Do Better Than Me" are no more rewarding for their directness. Something About Airplanes instead sounds like a private affair, which is one reason it's so treasured amongst diehards. Like so many other fledgling songwriters, Gibbard cloaked his voice in reverb and occasional distortion (even on the sweet and sour harmonies of "Pictures in an Exhibition") and danced around sentiment. For a band inextricably linked with heart-on-sleeve emoting, Death Cab could be delectably difficult to parse.

You can also hear how naturally and incrementally the group progressed from a fully formed blueprint. Regardless of Narrow Stairs' heavy-handed addition of new textures, you can trace a straight line to that point from the carefully considered guitar lattices of Airplanes' "Your Bruise". "Sleep Spent" is a direct descendent of mid-90s slow-core with better hooks. "Amputations", the most full-bodied track, features rumbling and almost mockingly chiming guitar hooks that sugarcoat the lyrics "he's unresponsive 'cause you're irresponsible"— a stronger precursor to their more recent theater sing-along lines like "you are beautiful, but you don't mean a thing to me."

While the deluxe CD package does include selections from their nervous first live show in Seattle and a cover of the Smiths' famous "Sweet and Tender Hooligan" which also features Harvey Danger's mate Sean Nelson— the real draw here is the chance to re-evaluate the band itself, who are often underrated or deemed as a group people "used to like" before getting into harder and more challenging music. And yet, while most of the indie crowd now embraces pop music in all its forms, something about dudes like Death Cab, who hit a little close to home but aren't considered "cool," is still considered to be a deal breaker. Certainly, Something About Airplanes isn't Death Cab's best album— in retrospect, it sounds like a dry run for 2000's We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, where the lyrics got more pointed, the hooks more emphatic, and the dirges more steely and purposeful. The studio tricks would become more sympathetic as well: In addition to the dated samples that adorn "President of What?", "Amputations" closes with a snippet of a motivational record called "You Can Better Your Best" that proclaims "if everybody's making fun of you or criticizing, you know you're on the right track." Granted, the song itself is about the futility of becoming someone you're not to win someone over, but the line unwittingly serves as a mission statement for a band that went Gold while rarely answering to anyone but itself.

Death Cab for Cutie originally formed in Bellingham, WA, in 1997 with their casette-only Elsinor Records release, you can play these songs with chords (later expanded and reissued by Barsuk on CD). The group, which appropriated its name from a song title by '60s UK rock ensemble The Bonzo Dog Band, has consistently released outstanding albums over the years, gaining a wider audience and seeping into the consciousness of mainstream America with the success of their latest albums, the most recent of which were released by Atlantic Records. The band remains a core member of the Barsuk family, however, and released their 2005 album plans on double 180 gram LP (complete with the vinyl-only bonus track talking like turnstiles), and will be releasing their most recent album, narrow stairs on 180 gram vinyl soon. In addition to the Ben Gibbard lo-fi solo project All-Time Quarterback CD reissue from a few years back, this year we also released the Chris Walla solo project, field manual, as well as the Steve Fisk & Benjamin Gibbard score to the film Kurt Cobain About a Son.

The reissue of Death Cab’s 1998 debut album, Something About Airplanes, is available right now. This limited 10 year anniversary deluxe CD edition includes a cool bonus disc featuring a recently-unearthed recording (as in blow the dust off of)... of the band’s first-ever Seattle show, a smooth February 1998 set at the legendary venue The Crocodile Café. The reissue also features beautifully redesigned artwork, including extensive liner notes by noted musician and writer Sean Nelson (whose band Harvey Danger was the headliner of the bonus disc show, and who sings lead vocals on the DCfC set’s never-before-heard cover of The Smiths’ sweet and tender hooligan). Still considered by many fans to be DCfC's very best album, but criminally unheard by many newer converts other than the handful of songs that remain staples of the band's live set (amputations, pictures in an exhibition, fake frowns), something about airplanes is not just a document of a particular time in the band's history or of a bygone era of indie-rock— it's an enduring work featuring some of the band's finest songs. UB

John Mundazio works for one of the numerous publishing companies in the New York metropolitan area which is currently planning a bold takeover of the parallel universe in which he occasionally resides with several of his imaginary friends and at least two of the strange voices in his head. But he is confident it is not the one you're thinking of at this very moment. Convinced that Susie-Q's are indeed a food group and that no REAL list of fun toys is ever really complete without mentioning "Log"— that quintessential Ren and Stimpy Show toy that boldly dared to go where no toy ever could... "The Dazed-Meister" refuses to partake in anything which requires him to dress up like Wonder Woman or sing the theme song from The Partridge Family in its entirety. He also opposes floatation devices of any sort.