Feel the noise

To: Sarah Liss

From: Andre Mayer

Subject: Narrow Stairs

Hey Sarah,

I think my first experience with the music of Bellingham, Wash.’s Death Cab for Cutie was in a Toronto club in 2002. Death Cab were the openers for now-defunct spazz-rockers the Dismemberment Plan. Their joint venture had the best handle ever: The Death and Dismemberment Tour. (It made a provocative T-shirt that I wore to smithereens.) Death Cab for Cutie weren’t nearly as frenetic and entertaining that night as the Dismemberment Plan (a tall order on any night, really), but DCFC nonetheless impressed me.

Death Cab have attained far greater fame than the Dismemberment Plan ever did, thanks in no small part to good song placement (on shows like CSI: Miami, Six Feet Under and especially The O.C.), but mostly because of the high quality of their songcraft. Death Cab write rock tunes that are refreshingly unpretentious and show a bloody-minded devotion to melody.

Narrow Stairs is their latest offering, and follows the phenomenally successful Plans (2005). Bixby Canyon Bridge, the melancholic leadoff tune, kills. It fades in with ethereal tendrils and singer Ben Gibbard’s melancholic air, and then suddenly rips into marvelously crunchy guitar chords. Whah! Invigorating! A glorious start. I love how it segues into the expansive I Will Possess Your Heart, which creates its enigmatic mood with blocky piano chords and a plucky bass line.

What are your first impressions?

To: Andre Mayer

From: Sarah Liss

Subject: Death before dishonour

Dude, we were totally at the same show, though sadly, I didn’t shell out for a souvenir shirt and am now seething with envy. And wouldn’t you know it? I, too, had my first proper encounter with the West Coast indie rockers at that show. I remember being underwhelmed by Ben Gibbard and co.’s bloodless whinging, though their set likely seemed even more lacklustre after Dismemberment Plan's Travis Morrison eviscerated a stuffed lizard onstage. How do you top plushicide?

I developed a soft spot for the sad sacks in Death Cab down the line, though I have to admit that fondness was somewhat compromised by their O.C.-assisted rise to fame. Before you accuse me of shameless elitism, know that my beef with Death Cab-as-teen-soap plot point is not about their transition from cult indie act to popular major-label darlings. I take issue with the way that series creator Josh Schwartz transformed the band into an empty signifier. Being a Death Cab fan became cheap, nifty shorthand for lovable but sissified geeks with a) pop-culture obsessions; b) a knack for cracking wise; and c) self-pitying tendencies.

More importantly, I thought Plans, their major label debut, was kinda… meh. Though a couple of tracks (particularly the folky I Will Follow You Into the Dark) stood out, the bulk of the album felt leaden and overly earnest. Don’t get me started on the shrill mess of wet noodles that was hit single Soul Meets Body.

I suspect my antipathy toward that album is part of why I’m quite taken by Narrow Stairs. Yes, those deliciously shredded rawk riffs that tear through Bixby Canyon Bridge are awesome. And though I’m still on the fence about I Will Possess Your Heart – the pulsating groove that goes on for nearly five minutes before Gibbard’s creepy stalker lyrics kick in reminds me too much of old dudes with ponytails who like to "jam" – I give the boys props for releasing a lead single that clocks in at eight minutes and 26 seconds. Mostly, I’m struck by the intensity and muscularity of the tunes. Whence came this brave new Death Cab with balls? It’s like their bruised pop psyches have been working out in weight rooms, learning to love the rock gods who lurk within.

Maybe I’m spiraling into hyperbole; admittedly, Narrow Stairs is not all about major riffage. But even the sweeter songs here have a complexity to them that I can’t remember hearing on previous Death Cab discs. A standout for me is You Can Do Better Than Me, a tangerine dream in which the Beach Boys and the Zombies woo Dusty In Memphis-era Dusty Springfield amidst galloping tympani, kaleidoscopic Wurlitzer organ and measured jangling bells. Sure, the boys are skilled at creating nuanced arrangements of guitar, bass and drums, but they’ve never had the confidence to experiment with texture and mood the way they do here.

Even Ben Gibbard’s voice sounds like it’s coming from a new man. Eight Death Cab albums in, and the dude suddenly realizes he’s capable of singing something beyond a pinched tenor. Maybe this isn’t as big a deal to you, Andre – I know you’re a huge Postal Service fan – but the shift in Gibbard’s voice is making me like Narrow Stairs more than I ever thought possible. Am I imagining things?

To: Sarah Liss

From: Andre Mayer

Subject: Narrow minded

Sarah,

You’re imagining things.

To my ears, ol’ Ben sounds as plaintive as ever, and I’m fine with it. Like him or not, the fella has one of the most distinctive voices in modern rock. It’s unfailingly earnest, almost pleading; plus, the man enunciates like nobody’s business. (He could start a lucrative sideline producing audiotapes of English for beginners.)

I guess what has always struck me about his delivery is the innocence and honesty of it, though I could also see how some listeners might find it twee. I suspect you’re one of those listeners. I also suspect that Gibbard’s solemnity might be the cause of your unconscionable assault on Soul Meets Body — to my mind, one of the finest pop singles in recent memory. With its towering melody, fastidious guitar lines and economical drumming, the song offers a master class in pop songcraft. Though I suppose if you disdain Gibbard’s voice, all that technical expertise is moot.

I’m with you, though: Narrow Stairs is a more vigorous effort than past Death Cab outings. The guitars are more strident, the arrangements more exploratory — I find Grapevine Fires to be a bracing blend of melody and abstraction. I disagree, however, with your comment about I Will Possess Your Heart — Death Cab aren’t noodly enough to be a jam band.

To your point about Death Cab being name-dropped so damn often on The O.C. — it’s unfortunate, really, because it’s sort of like popularity by decree. It felt, to me, like Death Cab had become a lifestyle choice. And anyone who loved another band (like Modest Mouse) was fit to be ostracized. That, of course, is something we can’t hold Death Cab responsible for.

What we can hold them responsible for are their lyrics, which I think are consistently clever. Yeah, sometimes a little too clever, but I’m not one to penalize a lyricist for over-reaching. One of my fave Death Cab sequences comes from the song The New Year off their 2003 album, Transatlanticism. It’s charmingly wistful: "I wish the world was flat like the old days / Then I could travel just by folding a map / No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways / There'd be no distance that could hold us back."

What’s your assessment of Narrow Stairs’s literary value?

To: Andre Mayer

From: Sarah Liss

Subject: You’ve got Cuties

That was a very noble defence of Ben Gibbard’s voice, my man, and one with which I don’t entirely disagree. The truth is that I’ve never found his vocals unbearable, just grating at times – that plaintive Gibbbardian warble can be quite affecting in small doses, though I generally like it sandwiched between offerings by other singers who possess… how best to put it? A little more meat in the vox department.

Moving on: nice call on the New Year shout-out. That track’s gotta be in my top 10 DCFC tracks, due in no small part to Gibbard’s elegant use of extended metaphor. That said, the band’s tendency to dwell on the same thematic tropes (love, lost love, long-distance love, love-faded-in-the-wash) is another reason that I prefer my Death Cab in bite-sized chunks. Lyrically, their fraught emotional treatises are often profoundly beautiful. I’m hard-pressed to think of another songwriter who communicates naked emotion with such poetry and grace. But their tunes tend to repeat the same prettily-worded, elaborate pronouncements in a way that reminds me of a gentle high school misfit whose crush on a girl is rivaled only by his crush on the work of e.e. cummings. I’ve never been able to put more than one Death Cab track on a mix CD without worrying I’ll come off as a romantic obsessive.

In the past, when Gibbard tried for more prosaic lyrical analogies (I’m thinking now of Brothers on a Hotel Bed, off Plans), the results were often awkward and forced. I’m impressed by his evolution as a writer here – the elegiac Grapevine Fires, which you mentioned, offsets the mournful Rhodes organ arrangement with sharp descriptions of raging brushfires (an imagined recollection of those terrible blazes in California?). I love the image of an oblivious child dancing through a graveyard while her minders listen to radio reports, "plumes paint[ing] the sky grey." I love that the song rests in the literal calm within the storm, that the speaker projects the hope he feels with his lover and her daughter onto the environmental chaos – the skewed sentiment struck me as terribly honest.

Similarly, the detailed geography and real-time reportage in Bixby Canyon Bridge – the narrative begins in a dusty gravel underpass and ends with a trudge back to a parked car – grounds the lofty quest-for-truth Gibbard searches for in the song.

Not everything on Narrow Stairs feels like a huge leap forward in the lyrical department. The Ice Is Getting Thinner and No Sunlight, in particular, tread rather tired symbolic turf. But I can feel Gibbard’s range expanding as a songwriter. I like that he’s trying out riskier material. The creepy narrator on the stalker-ish mantra I Will Possess Your Heart makes it an even more daring choice as a lead single. The neat imagery on Long Division and raw desperation of You Can Do Better Than Me reminded me of the Weakerthans’ John K. Samson – one of my all-time favourite songwriters, and an unsung hero in Canadian poetry.

What’s your take on Narrow Stairs, lyrics-wise? Do you think the more finicky production here overshadows the words?

To: Sarah Liss

From: Andre Mayer

Subject: Just the right words

I, too, wish that Gibbard and co. could address something other than matters of the heart. But then, few songwriters nowadays find such creative and humane ways of articulating the ups and downs of love.

Lyrically, Death Cab are as strong as ever. There are many standout verses on Narrow Stairs. Take this one from Long Division, a meditation on the intractability of some relationships: "They carried on like long division / As it was clear with every page that they were further away from a solution / That would play without a remainder." I also dig the opening to Your New Twin-Sized Bed, in which Gibbard sings, "You look so defeated lying there in your twin-sized bed / With a single pillow underneath your single head / I guess you decided that the old queen was more space than you would need / and now it’s in the alley behind your apartment with a sign that says it’s free." It’s a classic Gibbard treatment. He finds a visual symbol that’s oblique without being abstract. As a result, the sentiment is compassionate but by no means cloying.

What’s ultimately so satisfying about Narrow Stairs is that the band has improved its musical prowess without sacrificing its verbal cunning. The album has some soft patches — the limp Talking Bird and the strangely inconclusive closer, The Ice Is Getting Thinner. But all in all, the music is taut, melodic and refreshingly forceful. No Sunlight, Cath, Long Division — they all have hit potential. A skeptic might wonder, now that The O.C. is off the air, whether Death Cab’s moment has passed. I couldn’t give a damn, personally — whatever the context, Narrow Stairs is solid power-pop.

Favourite songs: Bixby Canyon Bridge, I Will Possess Your Heart, No Sunlight, Cath, Grapevine Fires

Rating: * * * * (out of five)

To: Andre Mayer

From: Sarah Liss

Subject: Death and taxis

Though I take issue with your description of the "soft patches" on Narrow Stairs – a comment that is now making me imagine the album as a rotten peach – I think, shockingly, that we’re more or less in agreement about this disc.

What’s curious, Andre, is that though you and I are united in our overall assessment – stronger, beefier music, clever-er lyrics, solid symbolism, rad guitars – it seems as though we’ve come to this shared conclusion through divergent paths. I mean this solely in terms of specifics. I’ll grant that I do love the emotional arithmetic of Long Division, but oh, I winced while listening to the "single pillow…single head" rhyme on Your New Twin-Sized Bed. Meanwhile, I’d love to curl up inside the gorgeously glacial-paced Talking Bird – the Vaseline-thick haze of feedback has a Quaalude-like quality that I dig. And I appreciate the way the spareness, murky/twinkly guitar tones and unresolved melody of The Ice is Getting Thinner evoke mid-'90s indie rock.

(Let us note that neither of us have mentioned penultimate track Pity and Fear, a percussive oddity with mawkish "primal" drums that shouldn’t have made the final cut.)

But y’know, the fact that we can both achieve comparable levels of satisfaction from Narrow Stairs for completely different reasons should be viewed as a testament to Death Cab’s prowess. It is indeed a fantastic collection of power-pop (though I’d dub it plaintive indie rock), one that introduces new levels of breadth and depth to the DCFC sound. Has Death Cab for Cutie’s moment passed? If this album is any indication, I think it’s safe to say their real moment in the spotlight is now.

Favourite songs: You Can Do Better Than Me; Long Division; Grapevine Fires; No Sunlight; Bixby Canyon Bridge

Rating: * * * *