A Week With Death Cab For Cutie's "Narrow Stairs: Day 2
29 July 2008
tell your friends...
Words by Tony Conte // Illustration by Erica Parrot
So you’ve heard that there’s a new Death Cab album out?
Expect the following: a fresh batch of melodies colored with passionate regret, shame and a unique cast of characters desperate to feel (or not to feel) these emotions. DCFC has made its name in delicate wordplay, stunning metaphors for every facet of the darkest emotions, and by reconciling the band’s melodic and rhythmic twists with lyrics thematically not suited to major keys or peppy time signatures.
Who ever said that sad songs have to come in minor keys with a healthy dose of dissonance to boot?
All of this notwithstanding: if it ain’t broke… why fix it? Narrow Stairs takes risks of its own, and often these choices trudge a new, if forlorn, path into the great artistic wilderness.
Where Narrow Stairs diverges from past efforts is in its effective use of slowly squealing feedback sometimes burying Gibbard’s plaintive vocals under walls of noise. In the past, when Death Cab would succumb to its God-given urge to totally rock out, it either came off sounding slightly clinical with the clean edges of extensive edits and processing (“The New Year”), or the noise took center stage leaving Gibbard to wail his lyrical heart out nearly unheard while burying alive gentle melodies in a squall of simplistic noise.
DCFC now uses noise of a more complex sort, and unrelenting, raw force to pummel you through more than a few songs. Even when Gibbard is fighting for a little space, a mere moment to rise above it, he is no longer just a sweet voice perfectly tuned and politely excusing himself to the front of the crowd of instruments, he now earns his moment of burial beneath the noise. Nearly frothing, at times, you’ll hear Gibbard fervently belting his lyrics out through a bullhorn effect, even competing with choruses of his own voice. Remarkably, for all of the defeatist sentiments, the man himself manages not to sound defeated. Sure, sometimes the characters that populate the songs are menacing, and they spend an awful lot of time mired in lamentations of crystalline self-awareness, yet despite Gibbard’s petulant delivery his characters concede defeat often.
Not always though. “Grapevine Fires”, a standout track, tells the tale of a man driven from his home to watch the flames consume the valley. The sight of a schoolgirl dancing in the graveyard on the hill is enough to provide the character solace. This may be the only instance on the album where solace of any kind is reached, but it is this brooding intensity which deepens the impact of each of these carefully written, often violently executed songs.
It is strange comfort to share in the character’s unabashed hopefulness during such a challenging time.. Enjoy the album, and thank Death Cab for suffering for our pleasure.
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Wonderful.