DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE

Line-up: Started out as a solo project for Benjamin Gibbard (vocals, guitar, keyboards, drums in the early days), and after the debut EP soon expanded into a full band with the addition of Christopher Walla (guitar, keyboards, production), Nicholas Harmer (bass) and Nathan Good (drums). Good left in 2000 (during the recording of We Have the Facts...) and was replaced by Michael Schorr for a few years. Schorr left in 2003 and Jason McGerr took his place in drums, completing the "classic" quartet line-up (pictured above). Walla left in 2014 and after a brief stint as a formal three-piece, the band eventually recruited tour musicians Dave Depper (guitar) and Zac Rae (keyboards) as official members.

Death Cab for Cutie are perhaps the most defining US indie rock band of the 2000s. And before you ready your counter-arguments (and there are plenty of bands to cite in such things), I do mean something that defines a particular item. Death Cab weren't the first to play their style of rock music (Gibbard himself has said that a good chunk of Something About Airplanes just rips off Built to Spill) and they weren't the last big band to do so either, and on this very website I've separately said that Arcade Fire defined indie rock for the new millennium and you could easily say that their maximalist sound had the biggest influence. But the first thing you likely think of when you think about the words "indie rock" is gentle guys getting emotional over guitars that fall somewhere in-line between midwest emo and acoustic singer/songwriters; you think of emotional, ornate lyrics that describe their central characters in such detail that some could call it melodramatic; you think of a certain kind of heart-on-sleeve approach built on 90s alternative rock but toning down the post-grunge guitars. Death Cab for Cutie, certainly for the first chapter of their career (roughly up to 2003-2008 or so, depending on how true you want to stick that "independent" part of "indie"), fits all those hallmarks so ideally that they may as well be the poster boys of the genre. And, well, poster boys they became as well. Following a steady growth in sales and acclaim and their jump to a major label in the mid-00s, they suddenly found themselves with a brief phase of genuine breakthrough success where on one hand music blogs and online zines treated them as either established royalty or sell-outs who'd gotten lost, and on the other hand they found themselves as the go-to band featured in any mainstream situation where a "cool" kind of indie rock presence of was needed (i.e. The O.C. years). Death Cab arguably popularised the sound that we treat as "indie rock" and some would argue further that they epitomize it, and it's the blend they made out of their influences that would become reproduced and replicated in the years to come in sound, production and even lyrical style.

Maybe there's some personal bias and warped perspective there, too - after all, Death Cab for Cutie were certainly the band that established indie rock (already tired of writing these two words on this page, take a shot whenever you see them) for me. The foundation of how my obsession with music was truly awakened lies in British rock music and whilst I wasn't exclusively an anglophile, most of the artists that fuelled my insatiable love and hunger for music in the early wee music nerd days were British acts from the late 90s and early 00s, discovered in succession by tracing steps and links between bands. The world of American alternative and "indie" music only properly opened up for me a couple of years later, and among the first of that invasion was Death Cab for Cutie. Their sound came to define what American guitar music both sounded like and meant to for me. But as I've traced my steps and explored this sphere of music in the years since, Death Cab are always in the core of it all. So, defining, I think is the right word. Best? That's up to you.

Death Cab for Cutie started with two men: Benjamin Gibbard who picked the name (from a song by the British psychedeliacs Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band) for his solo project at the time, and Christopher Walla who helped record the original demo tape Gibbard released under the name. Those two names, in turn, define Death Cab themselves. That's no disrespect to any of the other members: both mainstay bassist Nicholas Harmer and long-term drummer Jason McGerr (and his predecessors) are a consistent and reliable rhythm section who may rarely dazzle but who often have a sudden trick up hidden up their sleeve to reveal their flair when you may not expect it, and the newer members Dave Depper and Zac Rae haven't been in the band long enough at the time of writing this to display their influence yet. But it's Gibbard's songs that the band is built around, and it's Walla's sound that for a long time brought those songs to life. Gibbard is both an incredible melodicist and an evocative wordsmith, whose character perspectives and slice-of-life vignettes have the tendency to resemble short movies in how they set the scene and patiently reveal the true plot after the establishing introduction; his lyrics at their best straddle prosaic phrasing with conversational matter-of-factness, and how he both creates these sharp vocal melodies to highlight those lyrics as well as conjure further melodies underneath them to carry the song is a little marvel. Walla as a band member wasn't quite as much in the spotlight as Gibbard, but it's in the background where he made his major contributions in the first place: as the band's de facto producer for his entire time in the band since that original demo tape, his contributions form just as essential element to how Death Cab for Cutie came across as Gibbard's songs did. Walla's production style isn't flashy but it's perfect for Gibbard's songs and for this kind of music in general, being able to stretch into elaborate forms as required while still retaining the central focus in the band to bring out that warmth and intimacy that complemented their emotionally open approach. That collaboration got tighter and tighter with each step until 2003's Transatlanticism - for many the band's magnum opus - effectively blew the bank wide open and became one of the central tenets of 2000s indie rock. From thereon in both the band's sound and their production qualities expanded as they switched from an indie label to a major one, but the tight teamwork between Gibbard and Walla meant that every new decision was in service of the songs themselves. It's not exactly a hot take to say that Gibbard and Walla as a pair are basically the reason why Death Cab are, in the end, such a great band because they both contribute to the contents of the albums so concretely.

Of course, as spoiled by the line-up section up top Walla left the band in 2013, classically citing artistic differences. The years following his departure from Death Cab obviously marked a major shift for the band and for many people that change represents a curve too deep to follow. I wouldn't quite go that far, but you can't deny that his departure shook the band in a multitude of ways. In hindsight, the shakiness of those first few years post-Walla is the result of Death Cab taking time to figure out the way forward that feels right for them. It's not until now, in 2024 as I write this, that the picture is starting to look clearer and the path more defined, as they've adopted more electronic textures while leaving behind the home-spun guitar sound and sounding more confident about it with each release. So whilst there is a difference, and to some extent a step down, in the discography following that one major milestone point in time, Death Cab have remained an interesting band who consistently deliver, even if they've grown to be a completely different band in the meantime. If anything, the only real downwards slide that's taken place in the band's autumn(?) years is Gibbard's lyrics - at one point around the 2010s Gibbard grew tired and maybe a little embarrassed of his old style and intentionally began to simplify his phrasing, opting for a more direct and concise style. Sadly in the process he also lost a lot of the charm and resonance of his writing and it's actually been the lyrics I've struggled the most in the latter half of the band's back catalogue - not the music.

All in all, their whole body of work is an essential part of my shelf space and listening habits. I'm part indie rock dweeb and as predictable as it may be, Death Cab are one of my very favourite bands in that realm - their music is a treasure trove of delights, and Gibbard holds one of those voices which have a special kind of hold on me, immediately making me feel invested and at home like listening to an old friend. And if that's not all - if we want to extend the scope all the way to the side projects (of which some are also dealt with below), you have to include The Postal Service as one of the all-time great extracurricular activities. It's a one-and-done discography which has shown to have more legs than most bands with many more albums under their belt, and stands proud and tall amongst any other classic listed below in the main discography.

Main discography:

• 1998: Something About Airplanes
• 2000: We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes
• 2001: The Photo Album
• 2003: Transatlanticism
• 2005: Plans
• 2008: Narrow Stairs
• 2011: Codes and Keys
• 2015: Kintsugi
• 2018: Thank You for Today
• 2022: Asphalt Meadows

Other releases:

• 1997: You Can Play These Songs with Chords
• 2000: The Forbidden Love EP
• 2002: The Stability EP
• 2005: The John Byrd EP
• 2009: The Open Door EP
• 2019: The Blue EP
• 2020: The Georgia EP

Side projects:

Benjamin Gibbard

• 2012: Former Lives

The Postal Service

• 2003: Give Up
• 2023: Everything Will Change

(Discography gaps: Codes and Keys Remix EP, Asphalt Meadows (Acoustic), Chris Walla's solo stuff (at least the first album))

(the reviews on this page up until Asphalt Meadows were written around April to September 2024, before I started including dates on reviews. Any later reviews will have their date included)

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Main discography

SOMETHING ABOUT AIRPLANES

1) Bend to Squares; 2) President of What?; 3) Champagne from a Paper Cup; 4) Your Bruise; 5) Pictures in an Exhibition; 6) Sleep Spent; 7) The Face That Launched 1,000 Shits; 8) Amputations; 9) Fake Frowns; 10) Line of Best Fit
10th Anniversary Edition CD2: Live at the Crocodile Café: 1) Your Bruise; 2) President of What?; 3) Fake Frowns; 4) Sweet and Tender Hooligan (feat. Sean Nelson); 5) State Street Residential; 6) Amputations; 7) Pictures in an Exhibition

Intimate and moody; a solid band who still have not fully figured out their songwriting but already creating sparks.

If you want to describe Something About Airplanes succinctly, it's that it sounds like an album by a small town band. That's not a negative descriptor, nor do I even know how big or small Bellingham (Washington, USA) was in the late nineties so it could be all wrong. But Something About Airplanes has got that sound - scruffy and homegrown, devised in the bedrooms of small flats and brought to life in the tiny stages of dive bar open mic nights. The sound quality isn't too far from the cassette demos of You Can Play These Songs with Chords - or the live disc that comes with the 10th anniversary version I've got here - and so the album sounds like a series of live takes recorded in ramshackle rooms, but that fits so well with its forlorn and melancholy songs full of pathos. Perhaps above all, you can hear the sparks behind the young, talented people figuring their way forward but already beginning to tap onto something special. Now, a lot of this just idyllic romanticism by an overimaginative music nerd - and likely heavily influenced by the very enthusiastic and vividly depictive liner notes from Harvey Danger's Sean Nelson on the above mentioned reissue - but the songs also tell their own tale. Death Cab may not be quite fully-formed yet but the signs are obvious to anyone who's paying attention.

There's plenty of familiar Death Cab elements throughout Something About Airplanes but they're all still a little raw and rough in ways that have a recognisable impact, which isn't necessarily a bad thing when it comes to the album establishing its own identity apart from the rest. Gibbard's lyrics are less verbal and more crucually less narrative, leaving much more to the listener's imagination to figure out how things ended up in the sorry state that most of these vignettes depict. The music bringing those words to life is similarly less decorated, centered entirely around the tight interplay between Gibbard and Walla's oft-distorted dual guitars and Harmer and Good's tight rhythm section, locking each song into a particular setting they stick for the rest of their duration. Most of it's mid-tempo and moody, not quite heartbroken or sad but still slowly walking through a rainy day in an empty street. With all these elements combined, the overall feel of Something About Airplanes is somewhere between slowcore and midwest emo, with the occasional louder burst of guitar or a slightly bouncier tempo shift moving it away from that direction. It's a restrained record full of slowburners and so may demand a bit of patience - but once those hooks have sunk in slowly they're in there firmly.

In terms of the songs themselves, half of this is identical to You Can Play These Songs with Chords, with the band simply re-recording Gibbard's original demos one-to-one (minus the obvious technical flubs). Which is fair play: those original demo songs were for most part worth keeping and though these new versions aren't all too different at all, they are in all places simply executed better. The early show stormer "President of What?" now genuinely rocks out a bit and establishes itself fairly quickly as one of the album's obvious lead-in cuts that pulls the listener eagerly deeper into the record, the quietly grand closer "Line of Best Fit" now ends more dramatically with a few minutes of repeated melodies and ultimately a wave of feedback, the upbeat "Pictures in an Exhibition" now jumps out even louder as one of the album's few moments of real energy, and so forth. The anthemic "Amputations" perhaps gets the most effective facelift of them all - it was already one of the best songs of the demo tape and as it now comes with a bit of a bolder step and firmer touch, its achingly soaring chorus sounds even greater and places it as the highlight of the album. You could easily imagine it at home with all the other mid-late 90s alt rock staples and is the best example of the louder and slightly more grunge-indebted sound that the band would soon shake off while discovering what works best for them. In a way it's a shame this development kind of ended here - Death Cab could have been a great guitar rock band, too, if they had wanted to.

The new songs like "Sleep Spent" and "Your Bruise" simply continue on from the early recordings, acting as an extension for them rather than as a direct evolution. The opener "Bend to Squares" is of particular note simply because of how gracefully beautiful it sounds, right down to its tender intro of cello and picked acoustic guitar: a lot of Something About Airplanes sounds lovely to some degree or another, but in "Bend to Squares" specifically you can hear the genesis of the many heartbreaking ballads and arresting slow pieces that would become a regular part of the band's armoury in the future. The hurrying and manic "Fake Frowns", on the other hand, sounds more directly like the genesis of the countless bands who heard these late 90s indie records a decade later and would find their calling through them, and it's almost eery how reminiscent it is to so many young groups I've heard since then, but it takes away none of the charm of the "original". The strange duck of the brand new material is "The Face that Launched 1,000 Shits", a cover of Death Cab's long-forgotten local peers The Revolutionary Hydra which was added to the album as a last minute choice to literally bulk up the tracklisting and to pay tribute to the band's friends in the scene. Its woozy and hazy soundscape full of loopy organs and filtered vocals breaks away from the rest of the record and makes it an alluring and intriguing part of the record's flow - it's also just a really good song with a tight melody, and though the original is so obscure that I don't know how it goes because I can't even find it, Death Cab have managed to merge it with their own sound well enough that you could be easily forgiven for thinking it's an original.

One reason I might be so positive towards "The Death That Launched 1,000 Shits" - typically shrugged off as the album's weak link as covers usually are - is because it breaks out a little bit thanks to its unique vibe. There's a lot to appreciate and even love with Something About Airplanes and it's truly one of those albums that unfolds over time rather than immediately, but then that's also partly in due how a lot of it is more or less the same thing with slightly different melodies. It's a mood piece more than a collection of highlights, the kind of sustained atmosphere that sounds like it could be someone else's favourite album of all time if that mood happened to struck them when they neeed it. That isn't to say that it's all samey but the differences are often in the small details that exist outside Gibbard's songwriting - which is the album's relative weak point (comparatively speaking). Death Cab are already a solid band but Gibbard is still working out his voice as a writer, and though he's doing a good job here the simple fact is that he'd be doing a better job already on the next album as his gift for melody and arrangement became more diverse and having a band around him to throw off ideas with became more of a reality than it was when the bulk of this material was written. There are very few individual songs here that I would class as Death Cab essentials ("Your Bruise" and "Amputations" would make it to a hypothetical Flint Essentials comp though) and even after years of listening I still struggle to recall in most cases which song is which until they begin playing, and that's ultimately the reason why the album ends up with the rating it has. But in terms of creating a mood to sink into, it's still one of Death Cab's most arresting in that regard because in comparison to all the others, this is by and far their most intimate record - and that can be a little special too.

The 10th anniversary edition of the album comes with a bonus live disc, featuring one of the band's first live concerts (sharing the night with many other small bands like them, including the aforementioned The Revolutionary Hydra). The banter is charmingly awkward, the sound quality is quite good and the songs are played well and close to the recorded versions - which isn't surprising given the recorded versions are basically studio live recordings anyway. It's not the kind of extra material that should necessary convince you to get this edition specifically, but it helps to build a full picture of Death Cab circa 1997-1998 and works as a companion piece to not just the album, but perhaps even moreso to Nelson's liner notes that go into the evening in great detail. Nelson himself also features in the live disc's sole "only on this release" snag, a haphazard cover of The Smiths' "Sweet and Tender Hooligan": the arrangement is a little jollier but recognisably the same song, but with Death Cab relegated to a backing band for Nelson it's arguably the least essential part of the entire set. It's a nice little bonus that helps to colour the context around the album, but nothing genuinely important.

Physically: Clear jewel case housed within a slipcase/o-card. The o-card has a hole for the boat on the cover, which is actually part of the CD booklet cover that features the boat in the center of a wider set of ripples in bold blue and white - and those ripples then are actually on a translucent plastic sheet that acts as the booklet's covers, so once you pull back another layer you just have the boat in blank white space. It's neat! The paper in the booklet is also textured which is quite fun. The 10th anniversary CD edition was also a limited, numbered edition - mine's #8489.

WE HAVE THE FACTS AND WE'RE VOTING YES

1) Title Track; 2) The Employment Pages; 3) For What Reason; 4) Lowell, MA; 5) 405; 6) Little Fury Bugs; 7) Company Calls; 8) Company Calls Epilogue; 9) No Joy in Mudville; 10) Scientist Studies

Same as before but they figured out those kinks to iron out and what do you know, there's a great band underneath.

Very few albums make their point as clearly with their opening moments as We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes does. The first minute and a half of "Title Track" is muddy and muted, as Gibbard's intonation is comfortably unexcited and the music sounds like you're listening to the band play live from the adjacent room - so basically as you heard Death Cab on Something About Airplanes. But after the first chorus the production suddenly clarifies in a jump scare like snap, the dynamics get more dynamic and Gibbard introduces a little more life to his vocal melody. The song effectively repeats the same steps as before but it sounds mightier, more impactful, like a cocoon broken open. This is the moment when We Have the Facts... begins in actuality, re-introducing Death Cab a few years later their first appearance: it's still the same guys playing the same music, but their touch is more precise and vision more focused.

We Have the Facts... is a simple and direct follow-up to the debut album, but throughout Gibbard and Walla show off what they have learned in the couple of years following the first record (Harmer is also present, steady as ever; Good left shortly before the recording began in earnest and for most of the album Gibbard plays drums again too). The fake-out intro was Walla's idea to highlight how far he had come with his production skills (while also cheekily playing a prank on people's expectations), and across the rest of the album you can hear comfortably take the reigns as the man responsible for how Death Cab sound. The production still has that homely practice room atmosphere but the instruments are mixed clearer, the details are sharper and now and then you get a brief bit of additional flair with some audio filter drops and sound effects. In Gibbard's case his songwriting voice is still steeped in melancholy mid-tempo gazes into the complexities of young adulthood life, but he too has grown more confident. His singing has become warmer and more expressionate and his lyrics feature more detail, and e.g. "Company Calls Epilogue" is fully the kind of first-person character vignette that he'd turn into his signature style going forward. Musically he's starting to bring his different influences more boldly forward as well i.e. with the more energized power-pop-meets-midwest-emo tone of "For What Reason" and "Company Calls" and the atmospheric and elaborately textured "405" (which is just as much of a showcase for Walla in its sonic leanings) introducing new tricks into the band's arsenal. The guitar parts, played by both Walla and Gibbard, have also grown more elaborate and take full use out of the band's two-guitar set-up, leading to richer arrangements. With contributions from both gentlemen together, We Have the Facts... paints a vivid and rather cosy picture of a group of friends continuing to put their passion into their scrappy young group, but now insistent on doing it better.

It is, as boring as it is to repeat it, more of that early Death Cab sound but more refined and more elaborate - as well as a step closer to the "classic" sound most familiar from their biggest albums. It's all around a net positive affair from the listener's point of view because it taps onto the qualities the debut had with its gripping atmosphere and Gibbard's budding charisma, but displays it all in higher definition. With better songs, too - you can really hear Gibbard's growth in the wider structures and elaborate flows of the material here. "No Joy in Mudville" and "Title Track" sound like Gibbard hitting the perfect representation of what he spent the first album writing, their slow and steady paces building into emotional choruses, and in the case of "No Joy in Mudville" in grand crescendos of guitar that break through the delicate sadness of its depressed last dance of the evening vibe. The fuzzy electric piano and steady drum machine kick of the mid-album rest stop "405" cuts through the album's otherwise dominating dry guitars as a welcome splash of colour, and really highlights Gibbard's more elaborate sense of melody that's showing up across the record. But the heart and soul of the record is the "Company Calls" duology. The former is an all-guns-blazing style burst of vibrancy and energy that's downright giddy and thrilling, showcasing the liveliest side of Death Cab to date. Meanwhile, the "Epilogue" (really just a wholly different song where Gibbard utilised lyrics that didn't fit the first song) moves at a contrastingly slower speed but with a more burning emotional intensity behind its eyes: as the story unfolds so does the music, each of its choruses building up the tension and tightening the grip on the listener. Even if it's not the best song here, it's the most accomplished, a slowburning centrepiece statement for the album in all its sensitive emo balladry.

It's the kind of a great album that's surprisingly uninteresting to talk about because its excellence lies in such simple points. Walla's production is undecorated but effective, layering the album with clarity but also warmth; which then helps to bring out the best in Gibbard's songs and performance, and here he starts showing his credentials as one of the key frontmen of 2000s Western indie rock. There's a homespun intimacy to it all that keeps the songs grounded and immediately welcoming - almost comforting if you're into this kind of music at all - but strictly in the band's context it represents a semi-ambitious step up and you can hear throughout the record how the band are hatching into their adult form. "Company Calls Epilogue" could practically pass as a dictionary definition of a Death Cab song and you can practically hear the moment when the final piece in the band's self-portrait clicks into place, "Little Fury Bugs" is a call-forward to their most haunting moments in its use of sparse space, "405" is a prototype of the more programmed and/or keyboard-heavy ideas later down the line, to name some of the more obvious examples. The key thing is that nothing here gets overshadowed by the future: as basic as it is to say it, We Have the Facts... is a highlight because it's a rock-solid set of ten great songs with a classic turn-of-millennium mid-fi indie rock sound - resonant, heartfelt and immediately personal to the listener.

Physically: Jewel case with a white spine, fold-out booklet with lyrics. More Barsuk fun in the packaging: some of the coloured dots on the front cover are actually holes, with the colour coming from the larger circles in the page below.

THE PHOTO ALBUM

1) Steadier Footing; 2) A Movie Script Ending; 3) We Laugh Indoors; 4) Information Travels Faster; 5) Why You'd Want to Live Here; 6) Blacking Out the Friction; 7) I Was a Kaleidoscope; 8) Styrofoam Plates; 9) Coney Island; 10) Debate Exposes Doubt

A rushed-out stop gap release sure, but one which unlocks new paths and still strikes a chord.

The first three Death Cab albums are a classic cycle of band evolution, the oft-common step-by-step journey from unpolished potential to a self-assured group of skilled musicians. The Photo Album is the classic third act in that path - the first album sees the raw talent come out, the second album sets the core elements perfectly in place, and by the time bands come to the third record they look towards expanding their sound and bringing new ideas onto the table. Thus, this album accordingly introduces more of everything as the arrangements break away from the guitar-bass-drums cornerstones to incorporate a piano (electric or otherwise) as the lead melodic element and gentle drum loops are introduced to add additional shades to the backbeats, and other times playing with the idea that not including something in the blank spaces is sometimes just as striking. The instrumental sections have become more involved and different sounds are starting to bleed into the familiar indie rock sound. If you want to summarise this album, it's Death Cab moving forward beyond their familiar garden hedge borders.

There's another classic third album trope that Death Cab ended up tripping here as well. The age-old saying is that you have your entire lifetime to write your first album, and typically bands then follow it up with more of the same until for the next go-around they stare a blank slate ahead of them. In Death Cab's case, the band started the recording process The Photo Album before they had enough songs to fill it; the hard truth was that they had a tour booked and the band felt the pressure to have something new out by the time they went on the road, so The Photo Album was in large parts thought up on the spot ahead of the deadline. That goes a good way explaining why it sounds so characteristically disjointed as after the carefully constructed flow of the first two albums with segues and implied narratives, The Photo Album is just a set of ten songs put together with no running thread. It also makes it more obvious why the album opener "Steadier Footing" is a sparse sub-two-minute introduction that sounds like it was put together ten minutes before they had to turn the album over, why "Coney Island" sounds like a demo (if you ever find yourself hearing Gibbard's home demos for later albums, you'll definitely pick up on this) or why some sections sound a little underwritten like "I Was a Kaleidoscope" which sounds like it's one more runthrough away from completion, or why there's an oddly bare and long instrumental break in "Styrofoam Plates". Between the lines it's evident that the band started on the album before they had planned for it, and out of all the Death Cab albums it feels like it has the least to say in that sense: no defined goal or target to aim with the music that they were plotting.

Because of all that The Photo Album flew under my radar for a long time as it didn't hold together strongly as many of Death Cab's other albums, but be it through growth, patience or change in tastes, one day it clicked. Even if you're simply mashing a bundle of random songs into a single disc, you're going to end up on the winning side if those songs are really good. There's only one track on The Photo Album which has never grown on me and that's "Why You'd Want to Live Here", Gibbard's unusually bitter ode of hatred to Los Angeles ("is this the city of angels or demons" always makes me wince) which wastes a potentially decent little rocker into a series of haphazards sneers and an impatiently foot-tapping pace that feels like it's stuck in traffic and is fiddling with the throttle in idle anticipation. But elsewhere the band find themselves on an unexpected hot streak and many of those slightly off-track moments mentioned above turn out to be surprisingly effective: the oddly vacant instrumental section of "Styrofoam Plates" means that when the next verse does kick in it sounds immediately more intense as the tone of the lyrics ramp up as well, "I Was a Kaleidoscope" may sound like it's still a little in early access but the suddenly atmospheric bridges are among the album's most attention-captivating parts, and even "Steadier Footing" in all its minimalism (intentional or not) sounds genuinely poignant and intimate in a manner that really highlights the emotion of the little setpiece the lyrics narrate, so much so that I wouldn't hesitate calling it one of my favourite songs here. Starting from "Steadier Footing" as well, the whole nearly-first half of the record is still among the band's strongest continuous track runs - through the instant classic and emotionally complex "A Movie Script Ending" which perfects the early Death Cab sound and which lingers beautifully through its spiralling guitars, the sustained tension of "We Laugh Indoors" which sounds like it's stuck on an increasingly foreboding loop that tightens and tightens before it explodes, and the theatrically dramatic emo bombast of "Information Travels Faster" which in its tone seemingly purges out and unvents all the stress the group were under.

Maybe the new stylistic sidetracts also take their cue from the rushed recording process - with the precious little time that they had, it's like Gibbard and co tried out completely new ideas in a quick fix for inspiration and/or they didn't let themselves second guess anything. That leaves us with some really interesting choices scattered throughout the album. Most prominently it's shown with the carefully krautrock-adjacent sustained tension of "We Laugh Indoors" which has a sense of momentum and dynamics Death Cab hadn't showcased before, and with the layered loops and live drums of "Coney Island" which together with its softly textured keyboards make it reminiscent of bedroom dream pop. On the smaller scale of things, Gibbard becoming more comfortable with a set of keys in front of him instead of strings also bring a new and welcome flair into the band's sound, and e.g. "Blacking Out the Friction" would be an understatedly lovely pop song in any form but the decision for it to be pulled by the chiming electric piano immediately adds a whole different layer of atmosphere to it; "Information Travels Faster" gets a lot of its weight from its coldly clinking piano as well. It's also worth complimenting Michael Schorr, whose only Death Cab album appearance is here but whose intricate parts - balancing between deft and muscular - are among my favourite Death Cab drum sections and greatly help pull these songs forward.

Despite its snappy runtime and the writing process that practically tempted fate by threatening to make it stop gap record, The Photo Album ultimately finds a place both in the discography and (most importantly) in the listening rota. From a wider perspective it introduces a lot of ingredients that would be absorbed into Death Cab's sound on a full-time basis going forward; on a more personal level, and there's a kind of unfiltered bluntness to some of those new ideas, presented in this straightforward song-after-song-after-song manner, that makes them stand up even as their influence has become adopted into the later albums in a more developed fashion. It is still, to some degree, simply a transitional record between the band's early cosiness and the more widescreen presentation coming up, and in comparison to their other albums doesn't offer a clearly distinctive touch. But the songcraft is most of the time undeniably strong and that carries The Photo Album proudly over the finish line. Perhaps not one of their most intriguing cohesive statements but as the middle ground between a great album and a greater album, you're getting into something great regardless.

Physically: Jewel case with a fairly standard booklet, each lyric getting its own page with a similar micro-close-up photo of a texture like the cover. My copy is the UK issue that was released under Fierce Panda instead of Barsuk, so I'm not sure if the original pressing had something nifty going on in its booklet like all the other Barsuk releases have had.

TRANSATLANTICISM  

1) The New Year; 2) Lightness; 3) Title and Registration; 4) Expo '86; 5) The Sound of Settling; 6) Tiny Vessels; 7) Transatlanticism; 8) Passenger Seat; 9) Death of an Interior Decorator; 10) We Looked Like Giants; 11) A Lack of Color

The definitive 2000s indie rock sound, as laid out by the album that set the rules. This is what Death Cab have been building towards.

Something's obviously different right from the beginning. After a brief ambient buzz, "The New Year" bursts forward with crashing cymbals, a dominating drum pattern and rushing guitars. It's the first time Death Cab haven't opened an album with a slow and ponderous mood piece, something gently unwraps the album while it's the second or even third song which finally pushes the momentum. Here the usual pattern is reversed, with "The New Year" first kicking the doors down and the hushed "Lightness" immediately afterwards soothing things down. That there is an indicator of two not entirely unrelated points. One is that Death Cab clearly want to lift their sound to a more widescreen vision, to give their songs a sense of height and grandeur that had rarely been displayed in the previous, much homelier albums. The other point is that they want these songs to impact the listener immediately, with no lingering around where the melodies would slowly wrap themselves around the listeners' lives - things need to grab the audience by the throat right away. Death Cab are hungry and going for it.

Coming to their fourth album Death Cab haven't changed all that much from their previous incarnations: Jason McGerr has now sat on the drummer's chair and become the band's forever drummer, while Gibbard and Walla are both now more fluidly switching between guitars and keyboards as the songs demand it, but generally speaking Transatlanticism slots comfortably in the steady evolution of the group's sound rather than presenting a revolution. But it is the most noticeable jump in style between albums. This was their first album as professional musicians per se, now able to devote all their time to music, and so instead of burying themselves in darkened-up bedrooms and practice spaces when they could scrape the time, they've gained a new drive of determination to push themselves forward to justify their louder voice and growing audience. So much of Transatlanticism aims to impress the listener, to catch them by surprise and to make them pay attention. You can hear it in the sky-scraping guitars of "The New Year" and the dramatic quiet-loud jumps on "Expo '86" (exhilirating and anthemic) and "Tiny Vessels" (devastating and vicious), and in the unashamed and bashful ba-ba-bas of the sunshine pop of "The Sound of Settling"; it's even evident in the running order where songs seamlessly transition from one another as a classic sign of musicians aiming for something greater than the sum of the parts, including the aforementioned ambient buzz which both opens and closes the record to form an infinite loop to award those who pay attention. The eight-minute title track may not be the longest song Death Cab have released so far (it's been just pipped to the post by the long jam outro of "Stability") but it's certainly the most grandiose, transitioning the powerfully forlorn prologue to the cinematic showstopper crescendo of voices and instruments joining to form a singular overwhelming wall of sound. It's like something clicked one day and the band realised they can move people, and so they set out to move them by sharpening their approach and reaching for something greater.

The big gestures aren't just window dressing, the songs are built around it. The band released the demos of the entire album as part of the 10th anniversary reissue festivities in 2013 and it's a genuinely interesting set of early takes in many ways, but it's also clear that Gibbard's goal from the start was to drive his songwriting further (perhaps inspired by the radically different writing approach he was undertaking for The Postal Service's Give Up at the same time): even a bulk of the demos sound more immediate and exploratory of different dynamics than much of his previous output. The lyrics and the music go hand-in-hand, with the dramatic twists or emotional weak spots of the character vignettes and first person confessionals being highlighted by sudden bursts of volume or conversely pulling things back a notch at the right time. Gibbard also keeps turning his words more ornate and his extended metaphors more elaborate, and yet wields enough power in his pen to keep them from collapsing under their own weight. Case in point, the atypically long preamble to "Title and Registration" which takes up the entire first verse by talking about the car glove department (really), and yet that painfully, almost overlaboursomely mundane introduction is the perfect unassuming introduction for the gracefully growing song to start building from, both in its central story and its hypnotic arrangement that moves from rustic drum loops to a wistfully blossoming moment of graceful soaring. The songs are more meticulously constructed to resemble miniature setpieces that tell a tale in sound alone if need be, and it works so beautifully with Gibbard's ever-more-precise sense of melody - the songs aren't just more intricately arranged, but each section on its own is powerful enough for the songs to lean on.

All that paves way for Transatlanticism to be a genuine classic. All its superlatives are deserved, as each of its songs unfolds into a majestic mini-centerpiece: that includes the more quietly arranged breathers "Passenger Seat" and "A Lack of Color", the former of which looks upon the stars to grab onto a single still moment of content peace and hits like a punch to the guts in its serenity, the latter closing the record with a gentle acoustic shuffle that wraps everything together softly, beautifully and bittersweetly. Even "Death of an Interior Decorator", which aside its askew drum beat often gets lost in the middle of much stronger songs (the aforementioned "Passenger Seat" and the colossal, furious escalation of "We Looked Like Giants" which thrusts the album down the rabbit hole towards its closure), starts to hit different once you familiarise yourself with the lyrics and figure out where the title comes from. "Transatlanticism" itself is not just the cornerstone of its titular album but it's anchored firmly in the center of Death Cab's entire discography, hitting those chords with such emotional resonance that few songs in their back catalogue can match - a song about distance and yearning for proximity that felt powerful back when I was a young romantic in a long distance relationship, and feels even more powerful as an adult who has drifted apart people who used to be close for no reason apart from life taking you on different roads. There's a lot of incredible songs on the album (and "The New Year" has sometimes shared that #1 slot), but "Transatlanticism" is a notch above, like the entire album was summoned simply to give it a home.

Transatlanticism isn't my favourite Death Cab album but it has become their canonically definitive one amongst the wider audience, and for a good reason too. This is, in many ways, the perfected version of what Gibbard and friends set out to unleash when he first began writing and releasing songs; so much so that the band themselves realised they couldn't climb any higher on this same trail even if they tried, and so Transatlanticism also marks the point after which Death Cab would diversify and diverge from their sound rather than try to repeat its glories. It's a hyperfocused, ambitious album which clearly finds its creators taking an intentional great leap forward to grasp something greater, and yet it never loses its intimacy, its personal aura or its humble warmth. It's so indie 101 that it's practically a cliché to rave about it, but it proves time and time again what an essential journey it is.

Physically: Standard jewel case, with a lyrics booklet. Nothing too fancy going on with this booklet despite the prior Barsuk releases often offering something neat: the only novel thing is how the liner notes begin as a standard booklet with pages and all, but the lyrics section folds out. It's a little more awkward than it reads.

PLANS  

1) Marching Bands of Manhattan; 2) Soul Meets Body; 3) Summer Skin; 4) Different Names for the Same Thing; 5) I Will Follow You Into the Dark; 6) Your Heart Is an Empty Room; 7) Someday You Will Be Loved; 8) Crooked Teeth; 9) What Sarah Said; 10) Brothers on a Hotel Bed; 11) Stable Song

Vividly atmospheric and layered with immaculate detail, but also full of emotional wrenchers. A dreamy masterpiece.

Plans followed Death Cab's move from Barsuk to Atlantic, from independent to major label (though they've still kept close ties and partial licensing with Barsuk). This kind of move normally doesn't amount to much of anything in the end (unless you're just defaulting to doomerism over selling out or something), but the band was feeling the pressure. Coming off the wild and unexpected success of Transatlanticism (and Give Up too) and now swimming with the bigger fish, there was a sense of wanting and needing to meet expectations as they prepared for their fifth album, and how they chose to tackle this was to focus on the presentation. The songs they already had in store were strong but the band took extra time and effort to present them as pristinely as they could, maximising both Walla's production expertise and the possibilities of the new fancier studio environment that their new label allowed them to utilise. Where previous albums had favoured a more live-in-studio type sound, this time the group poured over every sonic detail in isolation.

Plans sounds phenomenally gorgeous. It's heavily layered but each of those elements is treated with love and care, allowing them to shine and to have a meaningful impact to the songs they inhabit: it's one of those records that sounds wonderful in itself but downright begs to be studied under a quality set of headphones, where those little details come to life. Despite its precise touch it still radiates warmth and intimacy, and if anything its dreamy textures only underline those elements further. It's a night and day difference from the cosier and more informal sound of the previous Death Cab albums, and to some degree it stands out even from the albums that came afterwards: the sheer atmosphere of Plans that its production and arrangement choices conjure sets it apart from anything they've done. Those decisions also affect the songs themselves: even during its most explosive moments there's rarely a crunchy guitar or a sharp edge on Plans, and instead its textural walls surround songs heavy on centerstage melodies and evocative spaces in-between. The songs are plaintive and often mid-tempo, where the more upbeat moments act as accents in the shading. The overall effect is like an album made out of the contemplatively melodic highlights that Death Cab have typically dropped as a mid-late album treat - your "Transatlanticisms", "Blacking Out the Frictions", "Company Calls Epilogues" et al - and flipping their typical approach by moving the more electric guitar-oriented tracks in the backing role this time, as keyboards and softly strumming acoustic guitars take spotlight.

The album isn't all about its sound and I'll get to the songs in a minute, but it's an aspect that's worth highlighting because it's integral to how the album inserted itself to my life. Plans was my first Death Cab album and it was one of the countless albums I borrowed from my local library as a music-hungry teenager, eagerly and haphazardly picking up CDs from their sizeable selection based on album covers, familiar names that had appeared in discussions between people who were more knowledged than I was or new releases I had seen reviewed recently across the various websites I read daily. I came to Plans with zero idea who the band were or what the album sounded like, and perhaps it was fate that my first listen of it happened to be late in the evening while wearing headphones: it was the perfect environment for the album's magic to reveal itself. I fell in love, leading me to eventually buying my own copy I could listen to late at night whenever I wanted to and subsequently it lead me to the rest of the band's discography. It became an album I associated with both my childhood home as well as atmospheric sunset environments, and so for a few years following my move to the UK, it became my go-to soundtrack on the late night coach rides from the airport to my home town whenever I returned to the old country. Those layers of instruments and melodies became an all-encompassing veil that wrapped around my world whenever the songs would play over the headphones, the wistfulness of Gibbard's writing soon teaming up with the bittersweet emotions of returning to a different time in my life between steadily increasing intervals - and those long journeys of focused listening had the added effect of leading me to consider each element and lyric line in detail, intimately becoming aware of every moment in every song and how it all flowed together.

The songs - or the album - wouldn't have attached themselves so deeply on me if they weren't so immacuately well written. Plans overall contains some of the best material Gibbard has ever written, even if you must acknowledge that it's not exactly filled with the most typical examples of Gibbard's songwriting. The emphasis on how the songs are conveyed and the atmosphere around them has also lead to a difference in how Gibbard approaches writing the music (or vice versa, for all I know). Gibbard has always favoured a litany of verses with brief repeating passages over strict and clear verse-chorus-verse splits, but frequently those repeating elements are almost an afterthought on Plans: the seams between what would constitute as verses, intros, bridges etc blend together more formlessly and the passages emphasise the instrumental aspects as much as the vocal sections, with a much heftier emphasis on the former than on prior albums. A good example of this is the band's decision to bring back The Stability EP's "Stable Song" from three years ago (where it was just "Stability"): the final instrumental jam section has been chopped off and it's now a neat 3:42 long, but the re-recording is otherwise faithful to the original beyond the increase in production values. "Stable Song" has sections but it segues from one to the next so neatly it's almost a formless transition, and instead the throughline of the song is its gentle build-up towards its mildly post-rock-esque sound walls in its finale, which in this environment sound like a drowsy curtain close rather than booming guitars crashing down. It feels right at home here on this album, where many of the songs are largely just passages of verses which often lead into a largely instrumental-underlined finale - most drastically on "Different Names for the Same Thing" switching from a contemplative piano backdrop (run through a vintage filter for those cracks and pops which in hindsight is hilarious for such a produced album) to the tightly groove-diven second half as the full band steps in and save for a single repeated line the song becomes an instrumental send-off. Gibbard more often sounds like a narrator who appears when it's appropriate rather than a frontman of a rock band, piecing together the stories stanza by stanza that are cut by soundtrack-like music passages, and that further lends Plans its own distinctive voice. But it's still all so awash with melody too, which is the most beautiful aspect of these songs. We know by now that Gibbard's greatest talent lies in how he constructs vocal melodies and so those verses may as well be catchy choruses - he breathes so much life into how his words travel across these gossamer soundscapes, and so each line acts like a hook without ever feeling like one. Every piece of the songs sound like they're full of melody, even the rhythm section.

The other way the production draws out the innate strengths of the songs is by highlighting the emotion inherent in the writing. Once again, known Death Cab/Gibbard quality and particularly following Transatlanticism, where his writing pen and the band's accompaniment knew how to aim a resonant strike to both the brains and the heart of the listener. Not much has changed on Plans but it all feels heftier: the cold venom in "Someday You Will Be Loved" is even more painful when represented with such lushness, the hazy "Summer Skin" lean on the lingering atmosphere on top of a steady bass swagger that's so tangible you can practically feel the heat and sweat of the summer high noon, and the age-worn introspection on late-album all-time deep cut "Brothers in a Hotel Bed" is devastatingly aching thanks to just how the instruments unfold in their layers throughout and the song frequently finds itself getting sidetracked in its dreamy instrumental passages. There's joy too: "Marching Bands of Manhattan" balances it carefully with a dose of uncertainty, but the ultimate expression it revels in is a sense of marvel and bliss brought out by the growing, expansive backdrop, ultimately establishing itself as a stunning and towering marvel which has firmly its foot in my list of greatest opening cuts of all time. "What Sarah Said" is the undisputed centre point of the record, with its slowly unfolding hospital scene steadily increasing in both tension and acceptance as the song duets between Gibbard's most direct storytelling to date and the gliding piano: it becomes a towering giant of cascading feeling by its roaring finale where it all comes crashing down, and pulls no punches about it. Plans is by no means an autobiographical record but to my ears its songs sound like they come from the heart the most, that Gibbard truly inhabits these characters and as a result the songs become a series of immensely resonant moments in time where a line can throw you on the floor completely if at the right state of mind and the musical accompaniment performs the actual tackle - how much of that is because of me analysing every line on my road trips so deeply that I may as well have lived within the songs is, of course, up for debate but the impact remains the same.

When Death Cab do lean into the choruses on Plans, they go for the jugular. Given how so much of Plans wanders its own ethereal paths where the catchy indie rock ballads sometimes seem like an accidental end result, the sections where the band firmly grab the listener's hand jump out - to the sequencing's credit not only do they not come across abrupt, but in fact they serve as important anchor points for the overarching flow. "Soul Meets Body" and "Crooked Teeth" were designed from the get-go as the singles for the record, focus-streaming all of that melodic abundance into musical vessels that could directly wield them - or in other words, they're sharp as hell pop songs. "Soul Meets Body" is to date arguably Death Cab's best stab at a perfect pop song: a song so full of hooks (from the little bass fills to the overt "pa-da-pa-pa" section) that the result is deliriously jubilant, and where the chorus does the incredibly tricky job of pulling the mood down while still sounding like a triumphant central moment. A lifetime later and it's still just as magnetic and radiant as it was when it first steamrolled through the headphones, and in the token track two lead single position it pulls the listener firmly into the album's world. "Crooked Teeth" meanwhile is the closest to the sound of the earlier albums that the album gets (even down to featuring frequent backing vocal contributor Sean Nelson in the final chorus, almost as a nod to long-time fans), its perky power pop bursting through with some of the album's most shimmering guitars and bringing a dose of afternoon sunshine into the record's general late summer dusk mindset - and it's irresistable in its simple charms. Together with the aforementioned grandiose yet distant "Someday You Will Be Loved" with its soaring chorus and the swivelling and yearning "Your Heart Is an Empty Room", the central section of Plans lays out some of its most immediate melodies right on display.

And yet, arguably the album's (ironically) biggest song strips away pretty much everything that makes up Plans. "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is a simple three minute acoustic ballad of minimalistic verses and choruses, just Gibbard and his guitar strumming away as he muses on love and death and how they tie together. One wrong line could turn the lyric into an overbearingly tragi-saccharine piece of emo poetry but Gibbard's intonation and ability to hold it together, combined with his gentle voice, turned it into a runaway hit for the band. And... I have no real exposure to its use in the wider world because I didn't live in the US, so the song remains as the same intimate and personal piece of heartfelt quiet as it always has been. Like many similar stripped down songs on many other similar hi-fi albums, "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" is a breather of sorts, a moment of quiet that exposes and zooms into what's in the center of every single song on this album: a gorgeous piece of music that shines even in its purest, most straightforward form. It's the proof that Plans is not just all about how it sounds even if that's a crucial part of its DNA too - the star has always been the songwriting.

Plans is an evocative, emotional and beautiful album, in more ways than immediately obvious. It finds Death Cab responding to a pressure to perform by focusing on how their songs are displayed and in doing so, stumbling onto a production aesthetic that adds a whole dimension into the already strong songs - a layer of space and texture that brings the melodies to bloom, that vividly colours the feeling within the lyrics and which adds a transportative quality to how it ebbs and swoons. It's just as much about heartrending ballads, disarming lyrical passages and the occasional burst of true joy, as it is about the memories once lived in and sights seen while gazing out through window while either passing through the quiet countryside at night from the quiet coach seat or while watching the setting sun and everlasting dusk of the Finnish summer evenings on idle holidays spent exploring music. Death Cab for Cutie are a brilliant band responsible for many great albums, but Plans is beyond all that and I have nothing but deep love and affection for every "melody softly soaring through [the] atmosphere", as "Soul Meets Body" puts it so perfectly.

Physically: Jewel case, with a fold-out lyrics booklet in that appropriately lush glossy paper that so many mid-00s album liner notes featured.

NARROW STAIRS

1) Bixby Canyon Bridge; 2) I Will Possess Your Heart; 3) No Sunlight; 4) Cath...; 5) Talking Bird; 6) You Can Do Better Than Me; 7) Grapevine Fires; 8) Your New Twin Sized Bed; 9) Long Division; 10) Pity and Fear; 11) The Ice Is Getting Thinner

Shaking things up with a louder, more unpredictable set of songs. The guitars are back!

With Plans having been such an intricately produced album that shifted the weight from guitars to everything else, the moment you heard it you could have predicted what its follow-up would sound like. As rock band tradition dictates, Narrow Stairs is back to a simpler mode of operation: it's recorded live on tape and built around live-in-studio performances with minimal overdubs (with no appearances from anyone beyond the four band members). The dual guitars are back in town as well and louder than they've ever been, and on top of that the bass too has been turned up. "Bixby Canyon Bridge" is practically a counterpart to Plans' "Marching Bands of Manhattan" in how it opens the album with a gentle step until it folds open and the difference between the two albums becomes clear the moment when the gently dawning riffs of "Bixby" suddenly break apart with the introduction of a giant crunchy bass, followed by the song disappearing into a swirling crescendo of thick guitar walls and revved-up lead riffs. Death Cab here sound like they need to let something out of their system after an extended period of keeping themselves graceful.

This isn't a dreaded 'back to basics' affair though; the more first-instinct, hands-off approach of the sessions has had the added impact of giving the band excuse to throw caution to the wind and throw in any ideas that come up. For all the preamble that comes with Narrow Stairs - the whole recording angle and how Gibbard always reminds in interviews that he considers this the band's most pessimistic album - the one thing you might not expect is that it's the most diverse set of songs Death Cab have featured on a single album. There's no clear throughline to Narrow Stairs in terms of style: besides the more obviously Death Cab -esque moments, there's plenty of quirks along the road: "No Sunlight" nods at jaunty surf rock, "You Can Do Better Than Me" brings a bit of an orchestrated Motown vibe into the proceedings, "Your New Twin Size Bed" sounds like an easy-cruising pop song covered by an indie band. Elsewhere the band opt for the more unconventional choices when presented with a crossroad: the recorded-on-tape tagline actually proves to serve a point when "Pity and Fear" ends with an abrupt jumpscare crash, courtesy of the tape recorder breaking unexpectedly and the band deciding to keep the take rather than re-record it. The stalker anthem "I Will Possess Your Heart" was chosen as the statement-bearing lead single (and the tantalising teaser trailer preview cut which got everyone anticipated - or me anyway) with all of its mighty eight and a half minutes, courtesy of a jam-like build-up intro that the group also opted to keep in instead of editing any excess as they normally might. For most parts, this lack of filter bears positive results: the stylistic curveballs bring out surprising shades unfamiliar from previous albums and "No Sunlight" in particular is a cheeky little thunderbolt in how the lyrics contrast with the giddy rhythm, the ending for "Pity and Fear" is more memorable than a simple fade-out would have been, and half the brilliance of "I Will Possess Your Heart" is how that hypnotic bass riff builds loops around the listener's head, the other instruments adding flavour and flourishes as the song builds and builds before Gibbard's vocals come in.

When the band aren't taking unexpected detours on Narrow Stairs - and most of the time even when they are - they lean onto that loud and rowdy aspect of four guys blasting music together live in the studio. You can't earnestly say that Death Cab have ever been in the consideration to be named as a great rock band even if they've expressed themselves through that language; the thing about Narrow Stairs is that it makes a convincing example that actually, they are a really good rock band too. "Long Division" and "Pity and Fear" in particular feature a type of a muscular momentum rarely heard in this band's arsenal, but they're exhilarating in how Gibbard's melodies are married to these noisy and aggressive (but politely so, this is Death Cab after all) battering rams. "Cath..." is almost DCFC-by-numbers and the most immediately recognisable slice of the album in its flow and writing, but thanks to the load-bearing guitar walls riding on top of McGerr's erratic and dominating drum rhythm, it shouts with a voice far bolder and more commanding than those similar prior moments have ever come close. Walla's production aesthetic still leaves the final songs sound polished but the raw edge that remains is proudly and openly displayed all over the record, and if you want to consider it as the band's "rock album" then it frequently does impress with how strong the band sound in that regard.

The tangible irony here is that my key highlight of the album is the song that is nothing like any of the above. "Grapevine Fires" isn't dark in tone, doesn't feature any unexpected twists in its arrangement or composition and certainly doesn't bulldoze through with guitars. Instead it's the closest thing Narrow Stairs ever comes to its predecessor Plans: dreamy, lushly melodic and graceful in touch, and even replete with a lengthy instrumental passage the likes of which were all over Plans. It's a song about the California wildfires of ca. 2007/2008 and presents it as an unstoppable apocalyptic scenario where the only thing you can really do is just back away and observe the flames engulfing everything; but there's also a sprinkling of hope as the firemen continue their battle without giving up and when the joy of a child in a safe spot, unaffected by the looming destruction, reminds that life still continues to go on. That bittersweetness and wistfulness are captured so evocatively through Gibbard's world-weary tone, the glimmering picked guitar and the harmonious backing vocals, and while the song intentionally takes a step back in intensity to everything around it, that's exactly what makes it stand out. "Grapevine Fires" provides a moment of solace on the album both sonically and emotionally and it serves as its beautiful centrepiece.

There are actually two more moments of calm on Narrow Stairs as well, in "Talking Bird" and "The Ice Is Getting Thinner" which similarly bring things down a more contemplative wavelength, but they act a bit more like speedbumps rather than a well-fitting rest stop. Walla's secondary guitar tries its best to uplift both of them but the textural guitar feedback swirls happening in the background of "Talking Bird" aren't enough to distract from the song crawling along a little too slowly, and the slide guitar in "The Ice Is Getting Thinner" is the most interesting aspect of what otherwise resembles a work-in-progress demo instead of a sparse moodpiece. Both are fine but they're a sizeable gulf away from where the majority of the album is, and the same is true with "You Can Do Better Than Me" which can't help but sound like an interlude rather than a fully developed song - not helped by how the most interesting element about it is how it segues into "Grapevine Fires" in the album's only case of interconnectivity between songs. Narrow Stairs can add 'slightly haphazard' to the list of attributes you could describe it as because the freewheeling anything-goes mentality doesn't always hit the target and though the batting average stays high in the positives, its dips are the most distinct in this band's discography in recent memory.

So, if you want to pick holes at the album then it's the minor sense of inconsistency that never quite settles down into a fully-formed, perfectly flowing experience. It's a loud guitar album except for the bits where it decidedly steers away from it, a jaunty little experiment with a sense of discovery except whenever it relies on classic ideas - strong and solid with everything it represents, apart from the few moments where it trips over. It's a great album and compared to many other louder-and-heavier discography entries after distinctively calmer records, it's a damn near masterpiece because it doesn't sacrifice any of the band's creativity or expertise. It's also anything but regressive: even though its live-in-studio set up is largely the same as with the earliest albums, you can really hear the progress and change in not just the chemistry and chops of the current line-up but how bold Gibbard in particular sounds as a frontman. The nitpick criticism shouldn't distract from those strengths - the wild excitement of its most esoteric sections and the storming thrills when it charges forward full steam ahead, leading to one of their more curious and quirkier albums overall.

Physically: Jewel case and a lyrics booklet, as usual. The last few strips of colour on the right on the cover - the more uniform blocks - are actually all different pages, with the booklet consisting of pages of increasing sizes with edges hanging out to create the effect seen on the full fron cover. It's small, it's subtle - but it's neat and brings back to mind the nifty little design touches of the Barsuk albums.

CODES AND KEYS

1) Home Is a Fire; 2) Codes and Keys; 3) Some Boys; 4) Doors Unlocked and Open; 5) You Are a Tourist; 6) Unobstructed Views; 7) Monday Morning; 8) Portable Television; 9) Underneath the Sycamore; 10) St. Peter's Cathedral; 11) Stay Young, Go Dancing

Disparate pieces form a part-experimental record that hints at greatness while obstructing itself from achieving it all the way through.

The buzz phrase bandied about for Codes and Keys when it was released was that it was Death Cab's "no guitars" album, sometimes elaborated as the "electronic album". Supported by the abstractly leaning "Home Is a Fire" being released as a free sample ahead of the album, it was an effective promo hook: if you were to ask me to give an objective description of Codes and Keys, the first thing that would pop into my head is that it's "the electronic album". This is despite the fact that I have owned and listened to this album since its release in 2011 and can, without a doubt, say that it's not so easily defined as such. That lead me to wonder why is it that I'm still defaulting to that statement, and from there I started thinking how I would actually describe this album more accurately. And then, well, that's the question isn't it - what is Codes and Keys?

Some background first, given the band - and most specifically Ben Gibbard - were going through a number of changes around this period. Gibbard had married his girlfriend, the actress Zooey Deschanel, in 2009 and moved with her to Los Angeles, leaving behind his hometown Seattle and all his friends and peers who still lived there. Isolated from his old habituals, he started to change his songwriting process: using less guitar for one, but also finding himself increasingly distanced from the dark and sometimes nasty characters and elaborate prose of his old lyrical material, reacting particularly strongly against the tone of Narrow Stairs in retrospect, and he took an active decision to change his lyrical style to something more to-the-point and less distressed. When it finally came time to start recording the new songs, thanks to the distance between him and the rest of the band the studio sessions were sporadic: the band would book a convenient studio for a couple of weeks to work on a few songs, followed by a break during which Gibbard would finish writing the next set of songs, repeating the cycle across several months.

That last part is crucial, I think. Codes and Keys is ultimately hard to easily describe or define as an album because within its covers you've got the starting point of at least three different albums. One of those is that hypothetical "electronic" album, where the guitars are pushed to one side and various keyboard and synthesizer patterns take their place; though more accurately, it's more like a slightly askew art rock album where the band lean into their more unconventional traits. The skittering and hurried "Home Is a Fire" which opens the album with a nervous twitch isn't a million miles away from an indietronica vibe but Death Cab as a band are still identifiably within it. McGerr and Harmer's rhythm section really shines not only on this song but the rest of the album, and they're perhaps the unsung heroes of this album who especially in this "section" of the record practically drive the songs - "Some Boys" is downright elevated by McGerr's drumwork leading the song's dramatic ebbs and flows. "Doors Unlocked and Open" leans into abstract lyrics and a sustained krautrock rev-up, the ethereal "Unobstructed Views" is a Death Cab piano ballad that's come back to haunt from the afterlife and is draped in various atmospheric textures, "St. Peter's Cathedral" is a bittersweet and weary sigh that intensifies its backdrop loops as the song ascends higher and higher. There's a really interesting and generally really good first half of an album right here, signalling a band that's eager to change things up and perhaps utilising their sporadic sessions coming together to spitball more unusual ideas outside any decreed, pre-determined course for the album's direction.

The other half of Codes and Keys is split between two different variants of snappier and melody-driven material that feels a little more like a natural path that the band could have expected to have taken on the way to the new album. One variant is, in lieu of a better phrasing, are the songs that sound more "Los Angeles" than "Seattle": brighter, soaring, charmingly swooning, and coincidentally also just all-around excellent. The album's title track is the best song on the entire album, marrying Gibbard's most powerful vocal melodies of the album with an ebbing and flowing string section that moves in a very atypical fashion than normal rock song orchestral backdrops. The whole song has this woozy, dream-like feeling that comes from how the strings move around Gibbard's voice, the anchoring drum beat and Walla's shimmering guitar, and it's gorgeous - particularly as it blooms into its regal finale where the strings finally lift the song in a manner you'd expect, after all that long build-up. "You Are a Tourist" is built around a simple, repeating groove and a radio hook-ready guitar riff, seemingly poised to ring out in stadiums but sounding so effortlessly lush and so irresistable that I can't play it without ever stopping what I'm doing and letting that galloping loop take me away. The strings come back in "Stay Young, Go Dancing" as Gibbard once again indulges in his favoured lyrical theme of fantasising about being old and remembering the youth, and this time they carry the listener through an affectionately sweet and "classic"-sounding orchestral pop song that could have easily come straight from a 70s FM classics station. These songs actually make up my favourite part of the album - but ones in tone and style completely out of sync with the first category - something that shouldn't bother me as much as it does, and it probably wouldn't if it wasn't for how Codes and Keys still has one more facet to show for itself.

I don't really know how to best describe the group that makes up the remaining three songs - all graciously lumped together towards the trailing end - other than the "normal" pop/rockers. It's the sort of material that would perhaps normally find its way into the world as bonus tracks or EP padding like Death Cab typically treat their b-roll cuts, but likely due to the nature of the way the album was recorded there wasn't really much in the way of excess material from the sessions (even the traditional follow-up EP was a set of remixes). "Monday Morning" tries to be a little cutesy and cheeky and sweet, but no amount of sugary vocals or fuzzy filters can cover up the rather mediocre melody or plodding backbeat; "Portable Television" tries to pick up the pace with its perky piano riff and McGerr's brisk drum work, but barely registers as little more than a nice idea. "Underneath the Sycamore" is, at least, a genuinely good song, embracing a shiny new wave-esque aesthetic as it rides on Harmer's steady bass: you can in hindsight hear the beginnings of the next album in its DNA (and the ramifications of that are for the next album's review to expand upon) but it has a habit of sneakily grabbing me with its shiny, driving feel. And yet, it still gets lumped up in this late-album slump that always slams the brakes just when I'm beginning to feel like I've always misjudged the album: not as fascinating as the art rock cuts, not as charismatic as the cinematic pop songs.

So, to answer what Codes and Keys ultimately is - it's difficult to simply pin down because it's a little all over the place in a real a mixed bag fashion. It's unfocused and not in a way that either feels intentional or would derive some kind of meta-level conceptual strength out of its diversity. Instead, it exhibits various growing pains, particularly with Gibbard in his home-away-from-home at the precipice of it all ending (he and Deschanel would divorce a few months after the album's release and that, too, is more of a story for the next album) and in the process of directly pushing away from his former writing voice. The state of the lyrics is genuinely a little a disappointing here as after so many albums of descriptively scene-setting and elaborate miniature stories within character studies, his texts here are often abruptly blunt or veer close to point-blank surface-level statements: given how integral the lyrics have always been for Death Cab simply down to one of the band's strengths lying in Gibbard's vocal melodies (and ergo what those melodies are singing), it feels like a misaimed course correction. It's another thing on top of all the other little breaks in the armour over Codes and Keys which keeps buzzing in front of you like a pesky fly while you're trying to enjoy the legitimately inspired parts of the record. The scale ultimately swings towards an overall good album nonetheless, but there's a point particularly in the first half where you can practically see a truly great album unfolding in front of you, and it never locks onto that groove.

Physically: Standard jewel case with lyrics etc in the booklet, nothing out of the ordinary. What's more interesting though is that the lyrics are otherwise in order except "Unobstructed Views" and "You Are a Tourist" are swapped. Indication of a late-process running order change? In the (hypothetically) original order you would have had the two longest and stylistically swaying tracks one after the other ("Doors Unlocked and Open" and "Unobstructed Views"), from which the big pop hooks of "You Are a Tourist" would have risen and then lead onto the overall more direct second half. I quite like the idea actually, and I wonder why they changed it - I was guessing vinyl restrictions ruining everyone's fun once again but this has inexplicably been released as a 2LP album so that's not it either.

KINTSUGI  

1) No Room in Frame; 2) Black Sun; 3) The Ghosts of Beverly Drive; 4) Little Wanderer; 5) You've Haunted Me All My Life; 6) Hold No Guns; 7) Everything's a Ceiling; 8) Good Help (Is So Hard to Find); 9) El Doraro; 10) Ingenue; 11) Binary Sea

A suddenly broken band tries to push through but leaves with compromised results; sounds slick, but not much within.

Kintsugi is a technique where broken pottery or plates or similar tableware is glued back together with gold or silver lacquer, visually emphasising the edges between the once-separate pieces: it's to highlight the damage as a part of the item’s history rather than to hide it away, symbolising resilience and the ability to overcome the hardships that life throws at you even if it leaves permanent marks. The broken vase in this case were Death Cab for Cutie themselves, as Walla announced halfway through the recording sessions that he intended to leave once the album was finished, citing lack of motivation and disinterest to force himself to go on for the sake of going on. Gibbard wasn’t in the best shape either as he now had his high-profile divorce with Zooey Deschanel behind him, which he was still processing while getting ready to say goodbye to his temporary life in Los Angeles. The gold lacquer came from the touch of Rich Costey, the first outside producer the band had ever used. Together with the direction that more firmly incorporated the synthesized and programmed elements carried over from Codes and Keys and Gibbard’s continued, intentional move away from his previous songwriting habits, there's a sheen across the whole album that presents Death Cab in a neat, professional light. Kintsugi, the album, is pretty on the nose about being directly driven by the changes that were taking place and piecing together a new path from what remains; and that lack of subtlety generally extends across the album overall.

It’s not a radical skin-shedding moment. As inferred, much of what Kintsugi presents was already found in one degree or another across Codes and Keys: the flirting with the polished production layers with keyboards and synthesizers and their ilk sharing equal space with the band's old core instruments, Gibbard's more straightforward way of writing. Codes and Keys had its flaws though and rather than pick up from the most promising parts of the album, Kintsugi instead finds the band doubling down on what worked the least the last time around. The hi-fi sound is sterile to the point that it oftne dulls down the intended emotional impact, the synthetic elements feel like they’re used simply because it’s 2015 and that’s just what rock bands do now rather than because they add anything to Death Cab's repertoire, and Gibbard’s once-evocative storytelling is now so toned down that it’s at best indifferent and at worst impossibly awkward, like a person confidently trying to speak a different language without having done their homework. Kintsugi is his break-up record and you can find threads throughout the album's lyrics that hint at picking through the debris of a relationship's unsatisfactory and detached dissolution (with noticeably frequent references to cameras and phones documenting every single moment), but always stopping short of what he actually wants to unravel. Gibbard mentioned in an interview long after the album that he tried to avoid bringing specific details about his life into the lyrics in fear of falling under scrutiny in the Hollywood-centric life he had become immersed im around the time, which at least gives a good excuse; but in return the lyrics now feel so generic and devoid of his usual turns of phrase that they're blasé and clinical, like commission jobs for someone else's mouth to sing. He's also just not very good at simplifying his lyrics: "Little Wanderer" is hands down the worst set of lyrics Gibbard has released on record, with the verbal snapshots about the troubles of a long-distance relationship and kissing by the baggage claim so mundane that it actually harms what is otherwise a fairly decent track with a lovely, gentle drive going on musically. At no point does Kintsugi sound like it could throw a curve ball, excite with something unheard or even just go out with a bang to celebrate the literal end of this line-up - it's just the kind of adult contemporary, middle-of-the-road material that you dread any aging band releasing.

To be fair, Kintsugi isn’t devoid of good ideas, it's just that the album is bent on trying to obscure them. Sometimes it's simply down to the lyrics distracting from the music, like with "Little Wanderer". Elsewhere it’s the production keeping things down, like with the slowly building introduction “No Room in Frame” or the new-wavey trying-to-be-anthem "Good Help (Is So Hard to Find)", both of which have good ideas but sound breathless and depthless, with some good melodies and concepts that are let down by a production squeezing the life out of them. Kintsugi’s studio wizardry is a whole universe away from e.g. Plans’ vibrant, warm textures: here there’s no details or immersion, simply a steady wall of processed sound reminiscent of the plain whites and greys of the cover. Costey’s radio-friendly production instincts frequently misjudge where the band’s strengths lie and as a result so much of Kintsugi sounds like it could come from any of the band's contemporary, airwave-welcomed friends - and it's not even done so overtly that you could genuinely call it a choice or a backfired experiment. It's whenever the album slows the pace down that the cracks really start to show, and given this is a Death Cab album there's a lot of expectations around those particular moments. But "You’ve Haunted Me All My Life", "Hold No Guns", "Binary Sea" et al are all reheated rehashes of the band’s former spotlight-stealing tearjerkers, now with less engaging melodies and lyrics. The shallow and treacly "Hold No Guns" is a particularly bad offender in this regard: it’s hard to put into words how far away it is from e.g. "I Will Follow You into the Dark" even though they’re both stripped down acoustic numbers from the same songwriter, and it's arguably the best song on the album to highlight where the record's core flaws lie when comparing it to the band's previous works (fun fact: apparently Walla was against including this song on the album but was overruled on account of his imminent departure, and maybe the retiree had a point).

There are silver linings. "Black Sun" and "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" are the two keepers of the album and they’re the closest it has to this set’s Death Cab evergreens, even if the album’s general issues still hover over them. "Black Sun” in particular has the kind of dark restlessness the band has always been good at conjuring, this time in the form of a steadily pulsating slow-burner teetering on the edge of breaking down, and it just about jumps off that edge with its guitar solo which has more edge to it than anything else on the album (shame about the needlessly vague lyrics that try and stumble at conjuring a scene). "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" is the closest the album has to an energetic rock number and it injects the otherwise gently paced and smooth-edged collection with some urgency and power, which works to its favour ("El Dorado" towards the end tries the same and just never finds a good melody to latch on). Some of the less outright exciting cuts have their moments too, with "Everything’s a Ceiling" and "Good Help" serving basic melodic hooks good enough to find enjoyment out of them. It’s a far cry from the usual compliment I'd give to Death Cab deep cuts, but I can’t deny that I don't find some level of enjoyment from them when they play out even if they’re clearly several steps lower from the band's previous norms. "Everything’s a Ceiling" in particular is the one song on the album where the slick, synthy sound comes across like it has some purpose and intent behind it, its atmospheric textures lifting it up - a hint that perhaps with some alternative creative choices made, Kintsugi would have fared much better.

It’s clear though that the band weren’t focused enough with Kintsugi to pull off anything more. Walla was suffering from demotivation in the first place and though the band put on a brave face in the interviews, losing an integral member of the band so suddenly (even if they honour their commitments and help finish the album), it's evident that the sudden changes thrown at them did a number on everyone else's motivation and focus as well. Kintsugi does what it can to turn the work of a broken band trying to move along like nothing has changed into something you could call a unified statement, but the spirit just isn't there. Kintsugi puts just enough effort in to steer away from being outright bad but it’s certainly a disappointing album, demanding a lot of effort from the listener to find the few reasons to ever go back to it. The worst thing perhaps is that it sounds like it could have come from anyone: between the sound, the writing and the still-raw line-up shuffle, Death Cab have lost their identity.

Physically: Jewel case with a lyrics booklet - nothing particularly out of the ordinary this time around.

THANK YOU FOR TODAY

1) I Dreamt We Spoke Again; 2) Summer Years; 3) Gold Rush; 4) Your Hurricane; 5) When We Drive; 6) Autumn Love; 7) Northern Lights; 8) You Moved Away; 9) Near/Far; 10) 60 & Punk

Take two at what the previous album tried to set out to be, but this time with everyone giving it their full attention to prove the point that there was something good in the basic premise.

Death Cab's new line-up is formally introduced here - with guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Dave Deppler and synths/keys wizard Zac Rae officially joining the group - but aside from that, Thank You for Today isn't so much a brand new chapter in the band's story as it seems to be another stab at the previous one. Rich Costey is back in the producer's seat, the weightier implementation of various synthesizer and programmed elements once again forms the core of the album's sound, and overall everything is all very familiar from Kintsugi - but this time there's no distractions. The band aren't literally coming apart during the sessions and instead with what Deppler and Rae having completed their trial period during the Kintsugi tour, the five-piece in the studio now are a well-oiled machine all on the same page; Gibbard's personal life has also calmed down and creatively he's back at an open drawing board, ready for anything. So, the gang hits the studio again with the plan take the ideas they wanted to explore the last time around and now put the work in it to make them good.

Just to get the obvious gripes out of the way, there are some aspects of Death Cab for Cutie that will never again be the way it used to be and those primarily revolve around how Gibbard approaches his songwriting. Unwilling to go back into the oft-formless narratives of his past and uninterested in mining the personal lives of himself and others around him for inspirations for half-imaginary character studies, his lyrical pen is still rather straightforward and sometimes so obvious and blunt that it's practically faceless; this also affects the way he then composes the songs, as the vocal melodies are likewise more direct due to the shorter lyrical patterns, further on leading to more rigidly structured songs. Just a simple change in lyrical approach doesn't affect most bands, but with Death Cab the shifts in how the emotions are evoked and messages are conveyed brings a noticeable change. He's gotten a little better about it since the last album (though "you used to be such a delicate kid/a lonely fish in a sea full of squid" in "Your Hurricane" is probably his new lyrical pit drop) but for a band that used to wield emotional resonance like a weapon, there is now a level of sterility now that they can't shake off. It's simply something one must accept and learn to live with - and it's better if you do because once you can look past that, the rest of Thank You for Today opens up to reveal just how good it actually is.

One thing that jumps out on Thank You for Today is the atmosphere cast over its length, coating the album in a hazy, dusk-like ambiance (maybe it's just the dark blue of the cover and the subtle moon phase imagery triggering some sort of midnight connotations?). The album credits list a staggering amount of different synthesizers, microsynths and similar gadgets, and you can hear their presence throughout the record not in a cold and processed fashion like the last time, but as textural veils surrounding the songs. Many of the album's strongest moments are the ones that really lean into those imagination-tugging soundscapes: "When We Drive" and "You Moved Away" sound like they're lifted from a particularly wistful memory, "Summer Years" is breathless and panicked as it runs through a thick night-time fog, "I Dreamt We Spoke Again" appropriately for its title conjures the image of half-awake contemplation in the middle of the night. The threads of those production tricks tie together the album into a largely cohesive unit with its own vision, and as a sucker for atmosphere in music I'm giddily biting into the bait: even if there's no genuine thematic or conceptual links present, Thank You for Today sounds like a concentrated body of work, standing out after the last couple of somewhat inconsistent albums. Costey's production felt like a stifling presence across Kintsugi, but here he earns back any honour lost. There's a lot of depth and tangible presence across the album, and it's not a coincidence that where they drop it for something a little more conventional, the album suffers the most i.e. the little-too light and breezy "Autumn Love" (though Gibbard giving the song the album's most awkward chorus doesn't help). But on the other hand when "60 & Punk" then closes everything out with a spacious send-off last dance, where the album gets as close to sounding like a band simply playing together in a room at the same time as some of its shiny dressings are stripped off, that shift makes for a poignant final bow.

Underneath all of that chugs a slick, hook-oriented set of songs where the signs almost always point to the chorus as the climax of the track - so much the same as with Kintsugi but once again, the key difference compared to the last go at this exact same direction is that everything is now sharper. The band also sound much more energised and motivated, which makes all the difference: there's now a genuine sense of urgency and desire to impress throughout the record, and so we end up with some of the more thrilling scenes in recent Death Cab history. For all my love towards the album's vibe, my actual favourite cuts are the ones which push their foot on the pedal the firmest. "Northern Lights" is a thrillingly reckless vehicle racing at top speed, decorated with glacial piano hits, piercing guitar twangs and Chvrches' Lauren Mayberry's backing vocals, interjecting the album's calmer middle with a surge of lightning; "Near/Far" similarly keeps the momentum up throughout as it rides on a steady drum beat, the choruses sounding like the moment the hands are taken off the wheel and the vehicle leaps off the edge, finding itself staying in air, perhaps illustrating the mix of the heightened emphasis on dynamics and the ethereal atmospherics working with it the best. There's even time for some fun curveballs, as "Gold Rush" takes the stage cruising on its Yoko Ono sample and the positively ludicrous, punctuating "(gold rush!)" backing vocals. I honestly had no idea what to make of it when I first heard it, but over time it's proven to be a deliriously whimsical yet legitimately exciting oddball of a pop song and an album highlight that pulls the listeners right into its looping groove - plus Gibbard's lyrics sound a little bit more engaged when he has an actual topic to drill into, i.e. using the gentrification of his neighbourhood as the central pillar for another song about reminiscing about lost chances. It's an odd duck on the album but it's almost refreshing in a way, as the band rarely let their hair this loose on record anymore.

I don't particularly like the phrase "return to form" as tempting as it is to use it here, because what the "form" is is so nebulous - especially in the case of a band like Death Cab who have changed so much over the years. The central point with that phrase is just to say that this is better than the last album, but maybe it would be more appropriate to say that this is where Death Cab 2.0 (or 3.0 if you consider the switch from Barsuk to Atlantic as another seismic shift) prove themselves to still be a going concern despite all the changes, both in the line-up shake-ups and general stylistic directions. If Kintsugi caused any concern or doubt, Thank You for Today offers a new default baseline: a genuinely excellent album with clear vision and inspiration, where the band have navigated past the bumps on the road and embraced the changes in a way that's re-energised them. They're a different kind of group from the old albums, for sure, but this group is also exciting.

Physically: Once again a standard jewel case and a booklet with just the lyrics, little to no extra artwork. The key interesting bit is that the various instruments played by different band members are broken down song-by-song (there's a lot more synths than you necessarily think there is, by the way), as opposed to the more vague instrument details typically found in Death Cab liner notes.

ASPHALT MEADOWS

1) I Don't Know How I Survive; 2) Roman Candles; 3) Asphalt Meadows; 4) Rand McNally; 5) Here to Forever; 6) Foxglove Through the Clearcut; 7) Pepper; 8) I Miss Strangers; 9) Wheat Like Waves; 10) Fragments from the Decade; 11) I'll Never Give Up on You

New form but old spirit, sense of playfulness and exploration coming through in a varied batch of tensely vulnerable songs.

When the COVID-19 lockdowns began, musicians sought out other ways of performing to audiences now that they suddenly couldn't tour physically. Gibbard was one of many who started to livestream concerts for fans from his home, doing so on a daily basis for a few weeks: he'd play popular favourites as well as deep cuts and including both special fan requests and self-serving cover songs, changing his "setlists" on a daily basis and in doing so dug deep into the Death Cab (and his other projects') back catalogue. Playing all those old songs reminded Gibbard (often to his surprise) of how he used to approach arranging and structuring songs, in ways that he hadn't done in years. The process inspired him to approach the new songs he was currently writing differently, eager to add that element of occasional surprise again into the mix - but he also didn't want to simply mimic his past self and so sometime later, he began a weekly virtual get-together with the rest of the band. Each week the members were placed in a randomised order: on Monday the first name on the list would write a piece of music whether a full melody or just a basic spine of a beat, sending their creation on Tuesday to the second person in the list for them to add or change anything they wanted, and so on and so on until after the last person had finished tweaking around the piece of music on Friday, the whole band would finally get to hear the fully collaborative impromptu song that everyone had put together over the past five days. Not everything that came through was a winner but more than anything the band cherished the spirit of the experiment - there was a sense of wanting to shake up how they approached their music by the time they would get the chance to record the next album.

You can hear the results almost immediately upon hitting play on Asphalt Meadows, when the dynamic-clipping guitar cracks of "I Don't Know How to Survive" are the most vivid thing to storm out of the speakers in a Death Cab record in recent memory. The appropriately firecracking "Roman Candles" rushes through shaking and running immediately afterwards, once again production levels hitting the maximum height (very intentionally courtesy of noise-weathered John Congleton behind the studio desk) until the synths, guitars and drums all form a gigantic wall of endlessly thrusting noise around Gibbard's hurried vocals, all condensed in a fleeting 2-minute flurry of energy. The title track next in line then jolts out with the muscle and urgency of post-punk, tightening its grip and tension ever further as the song progresses, highlighting for the first time in a long while that Death Cab can rock out mightily strong if they want to if they seize on the opportunity. None of it sounds exactly like anything Death Cab have released before - but they all have hints of something familiar running through them that hasn't been out in the open for quite some time, and the band are blowing the dust off with a bang.

The first few songs are a slight red herring: Asphalt Meadows never returns to the high-volume aural assault or the sheer brute force of its initial steps again. However, the album restlessly refuses to sit still afterwards, and so apart from the songs having a little bit more energy to them compared to the last few albums (courtesy of the band wanting to play something perky after being unable to tour for so long), there isn't much else that ties them together - except, of course, that same sense of unpredictability. You have within just a few steps something as disparate as the floatingly feather-light indie pop of "Pepper", the anxiously pounding "I Miss Strangers", the dramatic ambient ballad "Fragments from the Decade" and the suddenly jovial "I'll Never Give Up on You" which is only missing some handclaps and sing-along harmonies from sounding like an affably cheesy stadium crowdpleaser: Asphalt Meadows never settles down to where you'd expect it to and it refuses to be categorised easily in terms of overarching style or direction, and perhaps that's why it can take some time to properly grip onto it. Never does it sound like it's trying to play it safe though, and that goes for within the individual songs too. Gibbard and crew made it a point to add surprising elements to the songs so you end up with segments like the out-of-nowhere musical breakdown of "I Miss Strangers", where the melancholy hiding in the background gets to reign for an extensive section without the storming rhythm section getting in the way. This could easily result in a messy, incohesive album but Congleton's production ties it all together into a part of the same sonic universe, as does the pervasive hazy and melancholy atmosphere that penetrates through the cracks, conveyed both through the downcast melodies and Gibbard's lyrics which spend bulk of their time reflecting on the lost past and trapped uncontently in the present. Those lyrics have also sharpened up since the last few rounds, Gibbard tapping slightly back into his once-signature mannerisms and phrasings, and it's a welcome return call.

All of this reaches its logical conclusion with the album's inarguable centrepiece, "Foxglove Through the Clearcut". Gibbard dusts off an old demo snippet from 1998 which still radiates the homely navel-gazing that Something About Airplanes was made out of, lets the band re-interpret it with their 2022 goals in mind and they turn it into a wistfully regal slow-burner which moves between the longing guitar riff of its verses and increasingly explosive distorted walls of the choruses. Gibbard then lays over a contemplative spoken word narration on top of it, moving it from the more typical Death Cab ballad territory into something starker, more piercing. It's wrapped in bittersweetness, powered by its propulsive dynamics and deeply cutting atmosphere, guided by Gibbard's intricate lyricism and presents a musical vision that once again sidesteps everything else on the album completely, but which turns out to form an integral part of the musical narrative. It's the beautifully haunting heart of the album which continues to linger in the mind long after the song has ceased to play - and it, above all, represents the spirit of Asphalt Meadows the best.

"Foxglove Through the Clearcut" also represents a literal halfway turning point for the record. The first half as a whole is both poignant and muscular: the already discussed first three songs (of which "Roman Candles" has proven with time to become one of the band's most exciting two minutes committed to tape) are accompanied by the giddily morbid "Here to Forever" that makes existentialism and acknowledgment of mortality sound like a fun thrill ride in form of a perky pop/rocker with a sinister depth, and the more classically familiar Death Cab mood moment "Rand McNally" which digs into old memories in an understatedly happy (for once on the album) if Gibbard-esquely hyperdetailed way, carried by its delicate melodies and a gentle step. The set of songs are immediate and yet reward repeat listens to fully absorb the level of detail in the arrangements and the nuances in the tones, culminating in the slow-burn rumination of "Foxglove". The second half is markedly different, relaxing the tightly-wound atmosphere and twitchy anxiety lingering in the background, presenting an altogether different soundscape. "I Miss Strangers" is the lone reminiscent of the first half (much like "Rand McNally" is an early mirror of the second half), but the rest of the songs breathe a little more easily at least musically. That can take a while to get adjusted to if the mood of the first half was what pulled you deeper in the first place; and I'm speaking completely from my biasedly personal perspective because Asphalt Meadows took a while to grow on me as a whole journey for this reason alone (I was honestly a little cold on this back in 2022, but good job I don't review music based on first impressions). But there are plenty of striking moments worth cherishing across the flipside: "Pepper" is a gorgeously pulled off pop song packed with ache that pulls it back to ground whenever it threatens to go a little too lightweight, and the moment the production goes full bloom on "Fragments from the Decade" as the drums kick in fully and the incidental sound samples take the spotlight the vocals used to hold is evocatively ethereal (I know that some faint sounds of children in a playground is a cheap sentimental trick to trigger nostalgic pangs but if it works, it works). The earnestness of "Wheat Like Waves" is an oasis placed at the exact right place in the tracklist, its less busy soundscape acting like opening the door and windows to your room for the first time in spring and letting the light and fresh air in, its scene-setting narrative still guided by a deeply personal sense of vulnerability (Gibbard has mentioned that this one is an autobiographical flashback to real events) but the space around the instruments is more open and the production is warmer. It's only "I'll Never Give Up on You" that sounds like it doesn't quite belong, closing the album off with a slightly imbalanced sense of excitement and an intentionally repetitive lyric angle that falls short from working as intended.

We'll let that one slide though, on the strength of the rest of the album. It's really difficult to predict where Death Cab's career trajectory would have taken them if not for the unexpected complications from the lockdowns effectively setting a soft reset on any original tentative plans; in hindsight you could consider Thank You for Today as end of one chapter given it seemed to be as much about course correcting as well as finishing off a particular train of thought that had been interrupted the first time it came around, and who knows what would have happened next. Maybe having the enforced moment to look back and think how to move forward turned out to be wholly positive, because Asphalt Meadows is a great album. What I really enjoy about it is that - as confirmed by word of God - it's an album that looks directly to the band's past for inspiration, but if you didn't know that you wouldn't be able to tell: heck, I know that and I still can't hear this as any kind of a throwback album, much less the cursed "back to basics" record. Death Cab for Cutie refuse to let themselves stagnate and while they've admitted to re-learning old lessons from how they used to write music, they're not repeating the past in an obvious, tangible way. You can catch a glimpse of it in the spirit of the proceedings though, while the sound is driven by the preferences of the now-familiar five-piece line-up and the desire to look to new horizons. The songs on Asphalt Meadows are largely really good to excellent and the world-weary, oft-tense mood of the album is what gives it a flair of its own, but it's the balance of ideas from where the band are in 2022 and from where they were years ago that makes Asphalt Meadows come to life and connect as a piece of work. I don't know what's to come next, but Asphalt Meadows opens up the possibilities for anything.

Physically: Standard jewel case, lyrics in booklet, nothing too out of the ordinary here.

[Reviewed: 28/09/2024]

Other releases

YOU CAN PLAY THESE SONGS WITH CHORDS

1) President of What?; 2) Champagne from a Paper Cup; 3) Pictures in an Exhibition; 4) Hindsight; 5) That's Incentive; 6) Amputations; 7) Two Cars; 8) Line of Best Fit; 2002 Reissue Bonus Tracks: 9) This Charming Man; 10) TV Trays; 11) New Candles; 12) Tomorrow; 13) Flustered/Hey Tomcat!; 14) State Street Residential; 15) Wait; 16) Prove My Hypotheses; 17) Song for Kelly Huckaby (Facts Version); 18) Army Corps of Architects

Some early demos, and if you're listening to the now-canonical expanded edition, a bunch of surprisingly interesting early rarities to go with them.

Back in 1997 Death Cab for Cutie was just Ben Gibbard recording scruffy demos onto a cassette, developing his voice as a songwriter in humble conditions. You Can Play These Songs with Chords was a limited issue release of one such set of demos and it became wildly more popular than Gibbard had anticipated in more ways than one. In the real world of the late 1990s, its success inspired Gibbard to ask his friends to start a band with him so he could play those songs live, properly setting the good ship Death Cab in motion. From a wider influence perspective, whilst Death Cab in general have done a great deal to shape the post-2000s indie rock sound I would argue that the root of that legacy begins here already - at least if we go by how many demo-stage Bandcamp and Soundcloud (or Myspace...) artists I've heard over the years who've seemingly treated this EP and Something About Airplanes as instruction manuals.

But before we get too ahead of ourselves, lest we forget these are a selection of early demos at the end of the day and that's what they should be considered as, as well. Most of the songs on You Can Play These Songs with Chords would also end up on Something About Airplanes and as by and far identical versions beyond the minor improvements in recording quality on the album (and on that note, the sound on this isn't too bad, in case the "demo" moniker has made anyone concerned - it's just comfortably lo-fi). The deviations tend to be more coincidental than anything, like the brief tempo drops on "President of What?" which in no way sound intentional. If you're a fan of the material on Something About Airplanes (which I'd wager anyone who listens to this has heard already, unless you're really hardcore about chronological listening), it's the same songs; and on that same note, you can understand why this tape did create a minor excited buzz. Out of the three songs unique to this EP, "Two Cars" and "Hindsight" are more of the same forlorn mid-tempo indie melancholy that was the central pillar of this era of Death Cab, but the songs simply aren't as good as the others and it's obvious why they were dropped in favour of other material for the debut album (neat keyboard part on "Two Cars" though). "That's Incentive", on the other hand, positively comes out of nowhere with its blinding energy and power. It's almost punk-like and you could practically call it a precursor to the more muscular strain of emo rock that deviated from the rest of the midwest indie scene over the course of the 2000s. Death Cab have never sounded as intensively energetic as they do on "That's Incentive" - they've been plenty energetic, sure, but not with this kind of aggressive kick to it - and it's almost like a what-could-have-been glimpse of an alternative evolutionary path for the band. Plus it's just a great damn song, punching in at only around two minutes but leaving the biggest impression out of anything on the EP. Where did this Death Cab go when Gibbard actually got a band together?

But let's face it, though the first eight songs are a nice thing to have for the big fans, the real reason why this disc should be on anyone's radar is the ten bonus tracks that were included when the EP (album?) was reissued in 2002. Given Death Cab's growing popularity Barsuk set out to reissue the original demos which had previously been only available on cassette, but charging full price for a bunch of scruffy recordings (most of which most could already be found as improved versions on the readily available debut album), they expanded the tracklist and turned this into a haphazard rarities compilation for the first couple of years of the band's activity: the ten additional songs in the now-canonical version are limited issue singles and b-sides as well as a number of previously unreleased songs. Some are just plain and simple curios: the most notable thing about the cover of "This Charming Man" is Gibbard accidentally defaulting to a very awkward Mancunian accent when trying to sing Morrissey's melodies (and he flubs the lyrics too for good measure) and the early recording of "Song for Kelly Huckaby" has a slightly different vibe but otherwise isn't a patch on the version found on The Forbidden Love EP. But then there's the genuinely exciting, hitherto hidden material like the sugar-sweet, painfully twee lo-fi synth pop of "Tomorrow" that's far better than it probably ought to be and "Army Corps of Architects" which is a gorgeous, wistfully scene-setting piece that's genuinely among the highlights of the entire early years period, or the Weezer-esque "TV Trays" and the cheery power pop of "New Candles" (with Chris Walla in his one and only lead vocal appearance in the Death Cab catalogue) which both have a perky momentum that feels even more refreshing if you're listening to these immediately after the relatively placid main album. If you're into the first two Death Cab albums then the stretch of "State Street Residential", "Wait" and "Prove My Hypotheses" offer a selection of outtakes that could have just as well landed on the albums too - the Secret Stars cover "Wait" in particular grows from an initially quaint if seemingly unremarkable start to a really beautiful conclusion that marks it as one of the collection's highlights. And how could I not mention the befuddling "Flustered/Hey Tomcat!" is a casual, ad hoc foray into plunderphonics-like sampling that was practically to be born to be buried deep in the archives, but is the kind of novelty that every rarities compilation should have at least one of and it's got more legs to it than the self-snarking liner notes allow.

Together You Can Play These Songs with Chords and the ten bonus tracks form a vivid snapshot of a young songwriter learning his trade and then adapting it as the vision expands into a full band. The whole set is arranged chronologically so you actually get to hear the growth from the cosy early recordings to Gibbard and Walla first experimenting with the band's form and throwing ideas on the wall while simply having fun, to taking the experience from those sideways tracts and using it to build a bolder vision of their music with Harmer and Good coming in one-by-one. It all averages into a fairly good listen and a strong companion piece to the first two proper albums. It's scattershot by nature but you would expect that to some degree anyway, given what this is; but it holds up a lot better than maybe expected, as well.

Physically: Clear jewel case. The photo on the cover is actually printed on its own separate sheet on translucent film - you only get the solid, defined backdrop of the sky if the sheet is placed against the blank white front of the additional fold-out "booklet", which in turn contains the credits and selected band members' comments on the ten bonus tracks.

THE FORBIDDEN LOVE EP

1) Photobooth; 2) Technicolor Girls; 3) Song for Kelly Huckaby; 4) 405 (Acoustic); 5) Company Calls Epilogue (Alternate)

Outtakes from We Have the Facts... and gap recordings before the next album - and outtakes from a great album are unsurprisingly good...

The Forbidden Love EP starts the grand Death Cab tradition of following nearly every album with an EP release of some sort. They are typically - to varying extents - a collection of off-cuts that would normally end up as b-sides for singles from the albums, but singles the likes of what we were used to in Europe weren't exactly a regular part of the 2000s US indie rock scene - and so this was a way to not let good material go to waste. But that said, it's not quite like that all the time and The Forbidden Love EP in particular is more of a bridge between wrapping up the preceding We Have the Facts... era and paving the way to the next. Two of the songs are new recordings which feature the band's latest drummer Michael Schorr officially for the first time, while the others are various remnants from around the album sessions. Together they make not just a fitting postscript for We Have the Facts... but they also hint at the future.

The two brand new songs are served immediately. "Photobooth" is a fan favourite and it's kind of fascinating how it's risen in the ranks: the scruffy drum machine constantly in the background, the sparse verses largely riding on the lazy beat and the slightly out-of-nowhere keyboard swooshes of the chorus are all gently awkward like a geek in high school social, and you wouldn't imagine it as any kind of center piece or lead track. But that haphazard charm plays a big part in just how immediately attention-grabbing and catchy the whole thing is, and it doesn't take long for it to warm to the listener. It's a strange, quirky duck of a song but it wears its affectionate clumsiness as a badge of pride and uses it to hide a meanly well-written pop song underneath, and it is deservedly the EP's star attention. "Technicolor Girls" bears much more of a classic Death Cab sound, featuring a softly swaying melody befit for a movie scene, growing from Gibbard's gentle intro to a beautiful little full-band ballad: but you can hear the band's ever-growing confidence in their own talent and the strength it provides, once again representing a step forward sonically from where they were on We Have the Facts.... The evolution is even clearer when "Song for Kelly Huckaby" comes next, given it's the one song that was originally destined to be on We Have the Facts... to begin with (and an even earlier version can be found on the reissue of You Can Play These Songs with Chords). The waltz rhythm and the woozy synth string lead give it a distinctively hazy tone that definitely catches the ear and sets the imagination off, but good as it is it was the right thing to cut from the album because it feels like a retread of the other material found on it.

The three fully original songs are the main attraction of this EP but don't let that make you dismiss the alternative versions of We Have the Facts... cuts that the EP ends with. The alternate take of "Company Calls Epilogue" is a little more lo-fi and absolutely drowned in echo and reverb, and though the more direct approach taken with the album version was the right call, the quiet fury of the song definitely gains a different dimension from the way its sonics are treated here, coming across even colder than before. The acoustic version of "405", on the other hand, is one of the highlights of the EP. On the album "405" acts like an early blueprint for all the more layered, keyboard/synth-leaning mood pieces that were to come in the band's later years; here, it's brighter and oddly happier as Gibbard runs through that same lovely melody with just the accompaniment of his radiatingly chiming acoustic guitar. It's a lot more different of a re-take than acoustic versions of songs typically are despite not changing the song all too much, but it highlights the loveliness of the original in a different way and stands out. It's a really sweet version and an unexpected key track of this set.

This last paragraph I swear I'm only going to write once because it applies to every single Death Cab EP and I could easily copy/paste it in my reviews for each one: if you liked the album the EP is linked to, you always owe yourself to check out the accompanying EP. None of Death Cab's EP releases are truly essential in the wider discography - their albums are the main thing you should seek out and stick to - but these side releases fill in the gaps and colour in the lines between, while most of the time underlining or expanding on the strengths of the original albums even if the song material isn't always as rock solid. The Forbidden Love EP is therefore... more songs from the more self-assured version of the band who released We Have the Facts... and it continues nicely in its footprints. Perhaps the key difference here compared to the other EPs is that "Photobooth" is still a part of the band's regular setlist and so through that alone this is a little more canonical than the other EPs, but otherwise - it's mostly either more of the same as immediately before or alternative ways of hearing already familiar tracks, and that's just as good as the strengths of the parent album would let you expect.

Physically: Jewel case, no booklet - the cover is just a hard cardboard slip with nothing on the other side (the credits are under the translucent spindle part of the case. After the previous Barsuk releases, that's a little dull!

THE STABILITY EP

1) 20th Century Towers; 2) All Is Full of Love; 3) Stability

Outtakes that form a deeply affective atmospheric journey when put together.

The Stability EP isn't a stand-alone statement: all its three songs were originally released as bonus tracks on various regional editions of The Photo Album and this was just Barsuk's way of getting them out for a wider audience after the matter. Still, it does make for a very peculiar collection of songs in its own right. You can see why none of these songs were in consideration for the album proper (beyond the fact that one of them is a cover) and that's because their whole mood is so beyond the album's overall vibe that it's genuinely surprising they were recorded around the same time. The Photo Album is a very dynamic album, full of sharp instinctual moments that make the album's ten songs breeze by in snappy 38 minutes-ish; meanwhile the three songs here alone stretch over twenty minutes in total. They hover around the listener, their shoulders heavy and their movements slowed down to a crawl in an almost oppressively dense and foggy manner. These songs linger.

"20th Century Towers" is just about the furthest away you can get from an explosive opener, instead staunchly moving deep into slowcore waters. It barely lifts a melody, appearing like a distant echo or a shadow of a song that Gibbard idly mutters into existence: it very briefly opens up when the out-of-nowhere choir springs to life and cuts off all the music for a few fleeting words, and in this context it sounds like a bomb just went off. It's by no means a song that you actively remember in terms of its composition or hooks, but its mere presence sticks with you. The Björk cover "All Is Full of Love" follows and surprisingly her half-ambient electronic ode to the power of love translates bizarrely well into an indie rock form - not that it really resembles anything Death Cab had done before. It's in line with the stylistic experiments of The Photo Album but using someone else's song as the framework. The restlessly skittering drums invoke the original song's busy production perfectly and the murky atmosphere and textural guitar work are back, still creating an uneasy tone around the song. I would say Death Cab have made the song their own but it doesn't really sound like Death Cab either beyond Gibbard's distinctive vocals. His more unrestrained singing in the song's climax is the already excellent cover's inarguable highlight and goes a long way to make this interpretation more intense than the original - in Death Cab's hands this song about believing in the power of love sounds desperate to cling onto that hope.

The main attraction here is of course the 12-and-a-half minute title track that dominates the entire proceedings. "Stability" is an early version of "Stable Song" from Plans and for the first 3-4 minutes it behaves exactly as its more well-known and canonical re-recording, just with the spaciness of the 2005 version's high-detail studio production now sounding a touch more "organic", like the band are playing in the center of an unnecessarily big, empty room. The remaining nine minutes are effectively and instrumental coda, extending the original song's verses into an endlessly repeating passage with a brief reprise of the final verse towards the end, almost as an afterthought after the main microphone had already been disconnected. It finds Death Cab locking onto a groove, but the groove in this case is a gentle dream-like swoon that's too delicate to let go of. I knew "Stable Song" before I heard this and it's a song I had already become intimately familiar with and which I love deeply - so while some could call the "outro" of "Stability" needlessly long and repetitive, I'm beyond happy to spend more time in the beautiful musical section which I already adored. The Plans version is the definitive one, but "Stability" is a wonderful cloud of hazy sound to get lost in which sometimes is exactly the thing you need. Where the first two tracks kept tightening the tension around the listener, this releases it all in a happy, world-weary sigh and lets the weight fall off the shoulders.

It's a peculiar EP. It's the most obvious set of clear album outtakes out of any of the band's companion EPs, but it has the most unique character of them all. I would go so far as to call this my favourite Death Cab EP, but it comes with the caveat that it does arguably demand the most patience to really get into: it's all mood and vibes, zero setlist staples or obvious hits that end up playing in your head. But for 20 minutes you can find yourself transported somewhere entirely different through your speakers, and that leaves the most lasting impression of all.

Physically: Slim jewel case, and as usual for slim jewel cases there's no booklet or anything - just lyrics to the two original songs and credits for all three in the inner cover sleeve.

THE JOHN BYRD EP

1) We Laugh Indoors; 2) Why You'd Want to Live Here; 3) Lightness; 4) Photobooth; 5) We Looked Like Giants; 6) 405; 7) Blacking Out the Friction/Brand New Love

A pleasant selection of live cuts from a reliable but unsurprising live act

Typically Death Cab for Cutie album cycles are capped by an EP that hosts any songs that didn't fit the album, but there was no such excess material left over from the Transatlanticism sessions. Instead, following the end of the album tour and what had been the busiest year so far for the band, a limited edition audio postcard from the tour was released through select retailers. That's The John Byrd EP (named after the band's tour sound engineer), though EP is a bit of a misnomer if you judge by length alone - this is almost 40 minutes thanks to a few extended live versions and copious amounts of stage banter, and so in all but tracklist size it's a live album. Death Cab's only "proper" live album too, mind - excluding any deluxe edition bonus discs and random Bandcamp downloads during the pandemic, this is the only major live release from the band. Capturing them freshly on tour for their canonical album at the height of its initial buzz seems like a good idea, at least.

Death Cab as a live band are thoroughly reliable. That is to say, they're consistently rock solid performers who know how to bring a song to life in front of a crowd and entertain said crowd in a myriad of ways; but they're also reliable in the sense that you know full well what you're getting into and the band rarely stray from playing the songs identically to the recorded versions. The John Byrd EP therefore offers little in the way of surprises if you're familiar with the source material, beyond the song selections themselves. "We Laugh Indoors" was a single and "Photobooth" is a fan favourite deep cut, but other than that the EP avoids any of the "big" songs or even any of the key cuts from the album the band are touring. It's an eclectic selection of songs, but the band play through these songs like the pros they are and you can't really complain about it either. They're almost reliable to a fault: "Why You'd Want to Live Here" is still a bit of a drag just like it was on the album, and a few years and a chance at livelier dynamics doesn't change the band's treatment of it.

The last stretch of the EP does reveal something a little more adventurous, and as if by miracle the compiled and truncated setlist here really wakes up. "We Looked Like Giants" gets extended a few minutes over its original length into a groove-locked jam that builds and sustains its final release in a genuinely excellent way, "Blacking Out the Friction" is mashed together with Lou Barlow's "Brand New Love" and acts as a beautifully wistful way to end the evening in a manner which bows out rather than brings down the roof, and a bare-bones acoustic version of "405" is a lovely palate cleanser in the middle to bridge the two. It feels like when the band hit the encore section they've established a level of trust with their most devoted fans in the audience and that brings a new spark to their performance. Everything before that has been a thoroughly good, enjoyable listen but the last three songs is when you get the feeling that you want more of this. In all honesty, I think that its truncated nature doesn't do The John Byrd EP any favours. Death Cab aren't so exciting live that you'd necessarily need a live album from them, but at least if this was a "full length" representation of their set from this period of their stage antics, you'd have an interesting archival release in your hands (and you'd also get some of the "hits" with it too). In its current state... well, when do you ever feel like listening to a live EP, even if it's 30-odd minutes? Reliable, consistent, good and difficult to really rate low - but also much more of a neat little footnote than a must hear.

Physically: Jewel case, with a perfunctory sleeve note "booklet" (no inner pages, just some artwork corresponding to the coloured circles on the cover). My copy has a huge sticker on the CD tray from the shop in Chicago - just the barcode, price and description, but it's a nice memoir of the record store I stumbled onto while wandering around the city centre as a tourist.

THE OPEN DOOR EP

1) Little Bribes; 2) A Diamond and a Tether; 3) My Mirror Speaks; 4) I Was Once a Loyal Lover; 5) Talking Bird (Demo)

More dark and direct rock songs from the Narrow Stairs sessions

The Open Door EP is your standard b-sides and outtakes EP, released in lieu of including these on the album's singles: three of the songs are directly from the Narrow Stairs sessions, one was written at the time but not finalised until afterwards and the last song is a demo of one of the album tracks. What's interesting then is what exactly got left out. Narrow Stairs hides a streak of experimentation and fearless idea-shuffling behind the veneer of a return-to-rock kind of record, and the discards are emblematic of that. These are, all in all, the most straightforward songs of the entire sessions - a set of (mostly) to-the-point and concise rock songs that epitomise the idea of the band recording live takes as a four-piece without trying to labour the point. They're also bitter, lonely and content to live with their flaws: much of the lyrical material on Narrow Stairs drives around the same tracks, but the humbler and more immediate nature of these songs really drives those themes even if the music can be at times gently lovely or excitedly rushing. It's like the darkest sides of its parent album have been fully reflected on this disc and maybe keeping them away from the record was a way to keep it from being too hopeless at times, and having that thematic link does actually bind these songs together into a nice independent experience that makes for a good EP.

The key word here to describe the EP is solid. The four new ("new") studio cuts aren't full of surprises like the songs which made the album but they are well-executed and immediate, with each driven forward by a sense of urgency and built around a reliably Gibbard-esque melody that sticks from the get-go. The softly paced and gently wounding "A Diamond and a Tether" is the biggest takeaway, its light winks at americana being morphed into a lush little mid-tempo number that this band does so well. The other song most worth of note is "I Was Once a Loyal Lover" because it's the only one that comes close to the parent album's unpredictability, beginning with shoegazey guitar walls and quickly taking a turn towards a piano-lead romp - I admit that I would have loved to have heard more of what the first verse promises, but the energy the song bursts out of the gates with once the guitar subsides is a wonderful accompaniment to the lyric. "My Mirror Speaks" has a similarly charged-up pace and could maybe have done with a little more noise and fire in its sound, but pulls through as a reliably fun (well, "fun" given the lyrics) rocker that highlights the benefits of recording material like this as a studio live take. "Little Bribes", which is the song that was recorded separately after the main sessions and ahead of this EP, is also the one song that falls between the cracks somewhat - it's both thematically and tonally apart from the others and argue as the band may have otherwise about the want to go back to it, it feels the most like something that was perhaps only revisited because the EP needed one more song even though the song was already buried once: it's nice and all, but the most forgettable of the lot and the EP starting with it does give it a slightly underwhelming start.

The biggest surprise - and actually, the overall highlight - is the demo version of "Talking Bird" which has been almost haphazardly tacked on at the end. "Talking Bird" is one of the songs I'm the least fond of on Narrow Stairs, its sluggish crawl bringing the flow to a halt and the intricate feedback textures aren't enough to save it. The demo version is literally just Gibbard and a whispering ukulele and he seems to run through the song even slower, but with such a stark presentation the intended tone of the song suddenly finds a wind underneath it. "Talking Bird" is a quietly sad song in all its between-the-lines hopelessness, and when it's just Gibbard quietly singing this song of lament in what feels like an intimately small room, it hits a whole lot differently. If this had been the album version I'd be singing a whole different tune - here, it's the EP's hidden treasure.

With each of the four studio cuts you can hear why these songs didn't make the album: even the ones that are better than some of the lowlights of the album would have made for an ill-fitting party member next to all the significantly more ambitious tracks on Narrow Stairs. But it's a comfortably solid set of songs, which lean on some of the innate strengths of the sessions. The material itself is arguably most obviously destined to the outtake bin out of all the Death Cab companion EPs (which all to some degree started as similar closet-clearing exercises), but it has a habit of creeping up on you. Some of these songs (all apart from "Little Bribes" in fact) have lodged their title drop moments so deeply into my head that even if I spend literal ages without hearing them they're still there as fresh as they were the moment I first heard them, playing in my head randomly from time to time - and you have to give some positive credit for that as a proof that there's something worth visiting here, I think.

Physically: Jewel case, with a simple single-fold booklet with the lyrics and credits. The spine art work is close to Narrow Stairs', highlighting their connection when stood side-by-side on the shelf.

THE BLUE EP

1) To the Ground; 2) Kids in '99; 3) Man in Blue; 4) Before the Bombs; 5) Blue Bloods

Same starting point as Thank You for Today, but by a band who's just finished a long tour.

A hot while has passed since the last 'proper' Death Cab companion EP - Codes and Keys had a remix EP but the last set of original material linked to the preceding album's sessions was all the way back in 2008 with The Open Door EP. But given how re-energised Thank You for Today sounded overall, it's no wonder the band are going back their old habits. Only two of the songs present on The Blue EP are taken from the Thank You for Today sessions as well, with the rest having been freshly recorded for this occasion. It is in hindsight a little obvious as well: the five songs here are altogether a bit more pared-down from the parent album's distinguishable layers of production, the spotlight instead placed on the still-fresh quintet playing together with less decorations around them and no doubt inspired by their day-to-day operation on the tour just behind them. Just as much as the preceding album was about toying around in the studio space, this is about the people in the center of it all.

With all that in mind, it also makes sense why both "To the Ground" and "Before the Bombs", the two tracks from the album sessions and produced by Rich Costey, were ultimately left off Thank You for Today. "To the Ground" simply rocks in a manner nothing else on the album did, and specifically in a way like its anticipating a stadium audience in front of it: the thunder-hammering drums that keep the tension coiled and ready to spring and the song builds into a giant opening statement. It only really makes sense as an opener and it wouldn't surprise me if it was built from the ground up with concerts in mind, but "I Dreamt We Spoke Again" works so much better in the context of the album that there likely simply was no place for this. "Before the Bombs" could mayhaps have just about sneaked by as it features the same kind of dreamy haze that covered much of the album, and maybe it could have replaced one of the less exciting songs on the album (my vote is on "Autumn Love"), but it does feel like repeating tricks rather than inventing any of its own and ultimately, try as it might with that post-chorus mini-breakdown, it never quite stands up tall. The same goes to the self-produced "Man in Blue" to some extent: it's a simple mood piece of three minutes of longing guitars and shimmering synth backdrops, not much more than just connecting tissue in the EP's framework, but it's pretty and carefully poignant. You could imagine it as the last word on this particular chapter of the band, if it wasn't sitting literally in its center.

The remaining two songs are the EP's best and worst, both of which have coincidentally been produced by Peter Katis (of e.g. Interpol and The National fame). "Kids in '99" was for some reason picked as this EP's promotional "single" and the mind boggles why: Gibbard's reminiscing about the true gas leak incident which claimed the lives of two kids near where he lived in 1999 is told with the depth of a Wikipedia article and the vocal melody given to it barely registers, like he's struggling to think of how to convey his own song. The track in general mainly just serves to highlight Jason McGerr as one of the most underrated drummers in indie rock, as it's his snare-stuttering beat and the way it transforms across the track which anchors it all together and acts as its most memorable segment. Meanwhile "Blue Bloods" serves as the EP's gorgeous closer, its steadily pounding heartbeat of a drum rhythm eventually opening up to a widescreen fanfare of all-consuming guitar walls, drowning the wistful slow dance of the first few minutes with an extended crescendo of sound and volume. It's plenty of beautiful, a little haunting and completely mesmerising. Like much of the Thank You for Today period it's heavily textural, but this time it all leans on amped-up guitars which had largely been a supporting cast member on the album. Now they get to break loose and if caught at the right moment, can be just as stunning as many of the band's former torchlight glories.

That's three good songs, one slightly naff one and one brilliant highlight - that rounds up to an overall pretty good mini-release. The Blue EP a fine addendum for Thank You for Today that doesn't quite pick up where the album left off, but still wraps it up nicely: an afterword that isn't attached to its parent release, and in that sense it's a little reminiscent of vintage Death Cab EPs.

Physically: Jewel case with a lyrics booklet. The lyrics are in a mismatched order and the credits page is randomly in the middle of it all, which gives the impression of a printing/stapling error instead of a stylistic choice. Likely the latter, but it sure doesn't look it.

THE GEORGIA EP

1) Waterfalls; 2) King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1; 3) Fall on Me; 4) Flirted With You All My Life; 5) Metal Heart

A quick set of covers, slightly Death Cabbed but you know what you're getting into here if you know the songs.

For those who could do with a history refresher, or like in my case simply aren't American to begin with, the 2020 US presidential elections were a surprisingly tight race that a lot of people were nervously staring at thanks to the chance of Trump having a second term. Late in the election trail the state of Georgia was suddenly identified as a major swing vote candidate and so a lot of extra campaign effort was aimed there. Death Cab did their part by quickly recording a set of covers of songs by artists from Georgia and released it for 24 hours in December 2020 as part of a fundraising campaign - hence, The Georgia EP. Democrats did ultimately win in Georgia and in celebration the band re-released the EP for everyone in January 2021, though still strictly digital-only.

So, this is a set of five fairly quickly recorded covers, most of which are from names you could expect to find in this band's record collection: the likes of Neutral Milk Hotel ("King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1"), R.E.M. ("Fall on Me"), Vic Chesnutt ("Flirted With You All My Life") and Cat Power ("Metal Heart") slot comfortably around the same gravitational pull as the band themselves. The sole curveball is TLC's "Waterfalls" and the band do a pretty decent job with it as well: it's been translated into the musical language spoken by Death Cab in 2020 but retains enough of its own self that it jumps out nicely - and thankfully the band have intentionally skipped the rap section which in all likelihood would have crashed the entire thing. The rest remain largely faithful to the original with minor alterations, i.e. more polish and minor sense of drama in "Metal Heart" or a slight rhythm change in "Flirted With You All My Life" but nothing that would transform the songs into something else or reveal anything new out of them either. Gibbard's voice pulls them into the Death Cab cinematic universe neatly enough and if you bring this down to the very basics, they're all great songs - but none of them give a good reason for why you should listen to them instead of those original versions. The most "interesting" (and I use that term loosely) cut from a fan perspective is "Fall on Me" for the simple virtue that Harmer makes his studio lead vocal debut as he takes on Mike Mills' parts from the original, but beyond that there's little reason why you would listen to Death Cab play a 1:1 take of the R.E.M. version, especially when the second verse's counter-vocal melodies are missing from their take.

All of that is probably why this has never seen a widespread physical release (I think a limited edition vinyl was issued because of course one was). It's a quick, intentionally petite project recorded separately during the COVID lockdowns and released to support a cause, and not really an artistic endeavour as such: the band didn't really intend to make any kind of statement about their covering skills or the songs in question with it. It's a neat, enjoyable listen because of all the facts at hand (great band, great songs), but nonetheless hopelessly disposable and barely a footnote in their discography, even just considering the EPs. But, they raised a lot of money to a good cause so can't really fault them either?

Physically: Digital-only release.

SIDE PROJECTS

BENJAMIN GIBBARD

Given Death Cab for Cutie are pretty much Gibbard's child, he's only ever felt the need to do solo projects at ad hoc times and usually explicitly for occasions that wouldn't make sense with the band.

FORMER LIVES

1) Shepherd's Bush Lullaby; 2) Dream Song; 3) Teardrop Windows; 4) Bigger Than Love; 5) Lily; 6) Something's Rattling (Cowpoke); 7) Duncan, Where Have You Gone?; 8) Oh, Woe; 9) A Hard One to Know; 10) Lady Adelaide; 11) Broken Yolk in Western Sky; 12) I'm Building a Fire

Homeless songs from across the years, given an occasionally eclectic and mostly low-stakes place to reside in.

The obvious question is, if Death Cab for Cutie started out as Ben Gibbard's solo project and it's still primarily centered around his voice and writing, what's the thought process behind a de facto solo album? The equally obvious answer is that it's to find space for all the songs that didn't make sense in the space that Death Cab for Cutie had come to inhabit. The songs found on Former Lives span across the past eight years (so from ca. Plans onwards) and which Gibbard could not see finding a home in the band's middle period "grown-up" albums. Across Former Lives Gibbard adopts a number of different stylistic and songwriting hats and it becomes apparent why he kept them away from the various band sessions: it would be difficult to imagine Death Cab tackle an alt country romp ("Broken Yolk in Western Sky"), a 60s chamber pop tribute ("Duncan, Where Have You Gone?") or a mariachi-dressed folk song ("Something's Rattling"), or how in the middle of all the introspective character studies they could have fitted a song sung literally from the perspective of a building ("Teardrop Windows", about Seattle's Smith Tower). The title refers to how every song you write acts as a snapshot of your life at that point in time and so in that sense these "lost" tracks are all windows to various past lives, but you could also just take it to mean that these songs are glimpses at other songwriting routes for Gibbard if things had taken different turns during his career.

First things first, this isn't any kind of a hidden treasure cave. If Gibbard had a true knock-out classic in his hands, he would without a doubt save it and tailor it for his primary project; it was perhaps easier to leave some of these songs by the wayside not just because they didn't fit the vibe the band was operating on at any given time. Former Lives is operating on lower stakes - and that's part of its strengths, actually. Between the songwriting that's not out to make any grand gestures and Gibbard performing about 90% of all the instruments by himself, there's a cosy and homely feeling running across the entire album and it's a great example of a record which at least gives you the impression that these were recorded solely for the enjoyment of their performer, rather than as any kind of a musical statement. That's enough to boost some of the arguable run-of-the-mill songs all by itself: songs like "Dream Song", "Lily", "Oh, Woe" and "Lady Adelaide" are pretty much what you'd expect to hear after reading the words "Ben Gibbard solo album" and don't stray far from his usual tropes, but there's a casual kind of warmth to them and Gibbard's charisma works its magic in the center. They're fine and nice songs, nothing groundbreaking or worth really pouring over in detail, but they're also just simply nice to listen to if any part of your brain is receptive to Gibbard's voice or melodies.

It's those outliers and curiosities that make Former Lives worth checking out, though. The most divergent stylistic experiments are of course immediately memorable, but they do also hang together strongly enough that they're not just mere pastiches. "Duncan, Where Have You Gone?" isn't a million miles away from Death Cab's lushest ballads but the way it leans all-in on the Beatle-esque vocal harmonies and pianos go beyond just window dressing and sound like a love letter formed out of a lifetime of passionate listening, and you can always imagine discovering it in a sixties archival box set; likewise, while Gibbard with a mariachi background never threatens to stop being baffling no matter how many times you hear it (and though this is small reference points ahoy, it does eerily sound like level music from a Rayman game which makes it even more entertaining), there's a strong melody and a tender touch at the heart of "Something's Rattling" that breaks through the at-odds starting point. The biggest positive surprise is the Wilco-adjacent "Broken York in Western Sky" which is so good that it makes you want to hear more of where it's come from, with its gorgeous wistfulness and sunset-soaring slide guitars, ready to break hearts in the most wonderfully happy-sad fashion. It's contested for the award for the best song here by the Aimee Mann duet "Bigger Than Love", which surely must be here either because of a random whim or because something irrational prevented Gibbard from throwing a full duet on his band's album: this kind of bittersweet, anthemic pop rock is exactly where Death Cab ca. turn of the 2010s were at and this could have been a highlight anywhere, mixing drama and grandeur with a sophisticated polish and a centrepiece chorus. It almost sounds too big for something as endearingly quaint as the rest of Former Lives makes itself out to be.

Truth to be told, Former Lives for the most part falls in that safe spot where most solo albums by primary songwriters of bands get filed under: the ones where you know the drill by now if you're a fan of the band and at most there's going to be only faint differences attributable to different backing personnel. This kind of drawer-clearing exercise is tantalising as an idea, especially when it brings out more radical sidetracts like "Broken Yolk in Western Sky", but in-between all the curveballs are all these more familiar territories which set themselves apart from the day job in milder ways only the hardcores will detect. But what I appreciate about Former Lives is how earnest it is about all that: the whole affair sounds like a personal hobby project, a fun personal challenge for Gibbard to finish up this random bunch of songs he's accrued over the years and it's just largely coincidental we've got a full widely available album about it - and that's really rather pleasant to tune into in its own way. The scattered major highlights are a bonus that perk your ears up when they're on, but generally speaking I enjoy putting this on just in the background of a lazy day where I'm not focusing on anything active and don't necessarily need a more intense dose of Ben G, and I mean that in a wholly positive way. It's not a groundbreaking record - it's an incidental solo album recorded during a brief break after all - but anyone who enjoys Gibbard's songwriting is bound to find this reliably comfortable to dive into.

Physically: Square gatefold case in soft cardboard, with a lyrics booklet included.

THE POSTAL SERVICE

Collaborative project between Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello aka Dntel - Jenny Lewis (of Rilo Kiley) sang backing vocals on the first (only) album and then became the official third member when she became part of their regular tour line-up. Gibbard's first collaboration with Tamborello was singing vocals on the song "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" on the 2001 Dntel album Life Is Full of Possibilities: the two felt they worked so well together that they began to exchange song and production fragments with each other over mail (hence their chosen moniker), slowly building up songs until they had enough for an album. Released to meager expectations, 2003's Give Up became a genuine mainstream success and it's now Sub Pop's second biggest selling album. While the idea of a second album was floated around in the years after Give Up, both Gibbard and Tamborello have since officially confirmed they have no intention to record a second one - but they have put the crew back together a few times to tour the album around its anniversary years, and so are kind of sort of active still even if wholly operating on retrospective glories now.

GIVE UP

1) The District Sleeps Alone Tonight; 2) Such Great Heights; 3) Sleeping In; 4) Nothing Better; 5) Recycled Air; 6) Clark Gable; 7) We Will Become Silhouettes; 8) This Place Is a Prison; 9) Brand New Colony; 10) Natural Anthem
10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition CD2: 1) Turn Around; 2) A Tattered Line of String; 3) Be Still My Heart; 4) There's Never Enough Time; 5) Suddenly Everything Has Changed; 6) Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now); 7) Grow Old With Me; 8) Such Great Heights (John Tejada Remix); 9) The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (DJ Downfall Persistent Beat Mix); 10) Be Still My Heart (Nobody Remix); 11) We Will Become Silhouettes (Matthew Dear Remix); 12) Nothing Better (Styrofoam Remix); 13) Recycled Air (Live on KEXP); 14) We Will Become Silhouettes (performed by The Shins); 15) Such Great Heights (performed by Iron & Wine)

Gibbard brings his top tier songwriting into Dntel's atmospheric electronica soundscapes, creating a legendary synth pop record.

Give Up really is a case of stars aligning just right at the right time, in the right place. Gibbard and Tamborello met at chance during a concert and when they agreed to collaborate, neither could have expected just how well they hit it off with "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan". When they decided to take their teamwork further, it just so happened that Gibbard was about to hit one of his strongest songwriting periods (this and Transatlanticism being released on the same year is a hell of a CV flex), and the casual and unrushed way the two men put these songs together over time with no pressure through their titular snail mail exchanges gave them the opportunity to explore and evolve their ideas organically. Every single piece simply happened to fall perfectly into place in a completely coincidental manner and the result is a real high mark in both artists' discographies - not shabby for a little side project that wasn't intended to be anything as groundbreaking as it was.

Why it's so good is - again - a case of all its base elements finding perfect harmony with one another. Tamborello's production aesthetic is made out of stark and sharp drum hits laid underneath textural atmospheric touches and gentle synth pads - a combination of caressing and striking that keeps the songs on the move while also giving them the feeling of finding a moment of still to float in for a while. That combination happens to work just perfectly with Gibbard's gentle school boy voice: Give Up so often sounds perfect to soundtrack those moments of serenity you experience when you gently adjust to the waking world or conversely as you stay up to enjoy the moment while pushing back sleep, and Gibbard's cushiony vocals are never in danger of breaking that spell, rarely engaging in any kind of wilder vocal moments. He narrates his stories of people lost in their lives and the relationships they're failing to hold onto (with a dash of environmental and apocalyptic concerns for good measure) with clearly uttered, almost detached intonation and it syncs up with the dreaminess of the arrangements around them. The vocal moments that do pop up the most are the backing vocals by Jen Wood and Jenny Lewis, which are in fact the album's hidden ace in sleeve. They add a brighter contrast to Gibbard's voice and highlighting the vocal melodies in a way that genuinely uplifts them, and they're so integral to the overall soundworld of the album that they complete the formula that makes this album what it is; they're so important that it's no wonder that Lewis ultimately became a de facto third Postal Servant.

Another key facet of Give Up is that both men take this chance to play their idea of pop songs - because no matter how much you want to put the indietronica tag over this, you'd be just as justified to call this a synth pop album with indie aesthetics. Gibbard's always been an incredibly strong melodic talent and he isn't adverse to the occasional hook-laden hit in his main job either, but Tamborello's production has unlocked a willingness to take it even further. The prime example being, of course, "Such Great Heights" which alone has ensured both its writers a comfortable retirement and clearly shines as a highlight in both discographies: it's simply a meticulously and perfectly arranged pop anthem, building the tension though its forward-thrusting verses until joyously leaping into the air in that giddily euphoric chorus that really does make you believe in that idealistic love that the song throws itself into. It's a massive song and it's no wonder it couldn't be hidden even though it was stuck in an at-the-time minor side project by two niche artists. The deliriously smiling post-apocalypse floor filler "We Will Become Silhouettes" and the ecstatic "Clark Gable" are - still - among the most disarmingly catchy songs Gibbard's been involved with (not to mention Tamborello) and you can practically hear him dancing and having fun while laying out those huge melodies across the verses and choruses, and "Sleeping In" is a delightfully sweet piece of bedroom dream pop that practically unconsciously pulls you into a little body sway and groove as it floats on with its woo-hoo-hoos (though its well-intentioned but amateurishly clunky lyrics about daydreaming a better world are probably the album's weakest point). Though my favourite in this regard is "Nothing Better", a classic big pop moment duet where Gibbard and Wood trade off differing points of view and messily break down the breakdown of the characters' relationship on top of one of the album's most captivatingly growing and immediately grabbing arrangements. It's like a great TV show character piece episode that gets better the further it develops, with each comeback and counterpoint delivered through a stand-out melodic hook. This is the quietly - and counter-intuitively - experimental side of Give Up, giving its creators a chance to stretch their stylistic wings in a blank slate setting and they're clearly immensely inspired to do so.

But if you were to ask what makes Give Up special to me in particular, it's the songs where the dueting partners are Gibbard and Tamborello's production. Neither half of the collaboration ever overtakes the other throughout the record (quite literally too, with so many extended instrumental passages scattered throughout) and it's clearly a product of team work, and it's where those two sides pull power from one another that are its most poignant. "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" is in my books the definitive Postal Service song, quietly and patiently drawing the album's doors open with its ambient passages and Gibbard setting the scene for the eventual dramatic pull: which is then signalled by the production kicking up a notch, becoming a flurry of hurried beats and layered vocals that opens the song in widescreen so breathtakingly it's never lost its sense of wander. Meanwhile the drowsy ambient corridor of "Recycled Air" leans most openly into the Dntel album sound with Gibbard's crooning distantly radiating from its center, with an atmosphere so hazy you could get lost in it.

But you need to talk about the real barrage of a song trio that the album closes with. "This Place Is a Prison" ignores the record's generally dusk-radiant colours and takes a darker shift, giving the alcohol-soaked lyrics a pit to drown in - it's also one of the few songs on the album to feature live drums atop of the programmed beats and when they arrive, their hardier strikes come across downright oppressive. "Brand New Colony" pulls the listener out of the pit and back into the light, sounding downright manic in its declarations of devotion as the production zooms across the room like a supersonic hedgehog and Gibbard breathlessly throws a line after another like he only has a minute to live. But that chaos sounds life-affirming, like the same character from "This Place Is a Prison" decided enough is enough, had a It's a Wonderful Life style revelation and is now making up for lost time and opportunities; eventually the song builds up to a glorious finale that ascends towards the skies, its heartbeat slowing down in a hopefully optimistic fashion and the guitar lines and synths circling the vocal harmonies in what is possibly the album's single best moment. "Natural Anthem" is effectively an extended coda: over half of it is simply spent running around Tamborello's production wizardry, the production and arrangement exhibiting that trademark indietronica flutter before Gibbard appears for a brief verse to say goodbye on his part. The more years I've spent with Give Up, the more its final steps have become its most vital and definitive - it's a hell of a great way to end an album, to say the least.

The most striking thing overall about Give Up is that twenty-odd years later it still sounds completely singular, in a world it has absolutely no reason to. I called it "groundbreaking" earlier but it wasn't really: indie and alternative musicians had played around with electronic sounds way before this. But not quite like this and when Give Up became a freak runaway success it basically created the sound we now mostly associate with "indietronica" and more directly inspired countless albums and artists. You could even stretch the point toargue that as bedroom musicianship has evolved to fully studio-set sound quality thanks to advancements in home recording technology, more and more artists are using the blend of singer/songwriter and synthetic production that characterises Give Up as their default modus operandi and you wouldn't have to dig too deep into their DNA to find the direct link. The point is, a lot of stuff has either been inspired by or directly imitated this album - and somehow it still stands up as a unique beast that does this whole thing the best in a manner that no one's ever quite been able to repeat. It's a true moment of capturing lightning in the bottle and no one has ever quite figured out how to trap it there again like Gibbard and Tamborello did. Only some of that is directly down to the sound itself; the rest of it lies in how that combines with the intricate strongwriting and sharp performances and how all that comes together makes Give Up such a hypnotic, captivating world to step into. It also beats the curse of side projects and has long since proven to be just as essential as any of the best albums the members of Postal Service have released with their primary projects - in all honesty, it feels a little unfair to even lump this down simply as a "side project".

Finally, time to talk about the copy I actually have which is the 10th anniversary deluxe reissue. Besides the usuals and the neat-to-haves (remasterered main album, excellent packaging and a replica of the original booklet separate from the reissue-specific booklet), you've got the absolutely brilliant bonus disc that's about as comprehensive a companion as you could want. Most importantly every single additional studio track released during the initial album campaign is here, from b-sides to random soundtrack and compilation cuts. These by and large continue the album's winning streak, but were left out either because they're more like production experiments or simply wouldn't have fit in the flow. In the former department there's "There's Never Enough Time" where Gibbard only appears for a fleeting, short mantra-like verse amidsts a bouncily frolicking bleep-bloop-beat, and "Suddenly Everything Has Changed" where half the song rides on top of a shuffling sampled drum loop and the other half is a minimalist, textural whisper where the wordless vocal harmonies take precedence over the once-again sparsely written verses. On the other hand the joyously colourful burst of "Be Still My Heart" could easily have been on the album based on its strength alone (easily the strongest off-cut) if not for the fact that other songs on the album effectively occupy the same spot but with a bigger presence, and "Grow Old With Me" is a gorgeous ballad lullaby that bears a genuine sweetness but which wouldn't have slotted on the main disc comfortably. There's also a Phil Collins cover (the quite good "Take a Look at Me Now" which surprises with its sudden Latin guitar and drum patter), and the reissue's biggest attention grab i.e. the two unreleased songs. Both "Turn Around" and "A Tattered Line of String" were recorded a few years after Give Up when a tentative follow-up was being sketched out and then left in the vault when those plans were cancelled, now given a slight touch-up before the reissue to make them ready for their eventual release. Both are really good as well, and "A Tattered Line of String" in particular is a propulsively perky banger that could have worked as a great launch single for album #2; "Turn Around" is only slightly lesser and that's mainly because of its a little overtly repetitive chorus, but it also holds up strongly next to all the other material across the two discs. Both songs fit perfectly amidst all the existing material, and maybe that was the ultimate reason why they never saw the light of the day - neither show any kind of evolution and perhaps the duo/trio felt that there was no point in simply repeating what the debut did.

The second half of the reissue bonus disc is dedicated to various alternative versions. The remixes are more consistent bunch than you'd normally expected from a set of remixes, with the kudos largely falling to the idea of recruiting many of Dntel's indie-electronica peers so the reworks aren't too radically different sonically from the original album's production: the highlights here are the DJ Downfall remix of "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" which follows the original faithfully but adds more muscle and gives it an additional layer of intensity that works quite well, and the Nobody remix of "Be Still My Heart" which fleshes out the original composition in all the right ways and is actually my preferred version of the song. The live version of "Recycled Air" brings the song closer to Gibbard's main job as it's just him on an acoustic guitar with all the electronic elements removed, and it's a beautifully solemn take on the song. The disc is rounded off by two contemporary covers (which also appeared as b-sides back in the day): to no surprise The Shins' version of "We Will Become Silhouettes" sounds exactly like an early Shins song as the original's bouncy exuberance fits perfectly with The Shins' aesthetic, and the stripped-down and scruffed-up version of "Such Great Heights" by Iron & Wine is a beautifully intimate rendition of the song, turning it into a quiet ballad whispered in the secrecy of someone's bedroom. The whole hour's worth of bonus material is pretty excellent throughout and is a genuinely great listening experience, inviting for repeat plays more than most bonus discs. The only complaint I can come up with is that it would have been neat to have included "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" to round off the entire thing, given it effectively started the whole Postal Service saga and was part of the their regular live set - but that's a daydream bonus, not something genuinely worth raising a fuss about. The bonus disc is pretty much essential if you're into the main album, and like said this ends up getting a spin all the time from me whenever I find myself in the mood for the main album.

Physically: So I've got the 10th anniversary deluxe version and it's a real lovely package. It's a super-thick gatefold package with multiple inner centerfolds, resembling a book with thick pages. Two of its sleeve areas feature the discs; the other two feature, as mentioned, a booklet for each disc, with a replica of the original booklet accompanying CD1 and a booklet of tour, backstage and promotional photos accompanying CD2 (together with credits and lyrics for all the additional songs). Across the three centerfolds you have high-resolution, expanded versions of the illustrated artwork that originally graced the covers of the album's three singles. It's luxurious without feeling excessive or oversized - a really great middle ground between celebratory and comprehensive, and practical from a shelf-management perspective.

EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE

1) The District Sleeps Alone Tonight; 2) We Will Become Silhouettes; 3) Sleeping In; 4) Turn Around; 5) Nothing Better; 6) Recycled Air; 7) Be Still My Heart; 8) Clark Gable; 9) Our Secret; 10) This Place Is a Prison; 11) There's Never Enough Time; 12) A Tattered Line of String; 13) Such Great Heights; 14) Natural Anthem; 15) (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan; 16) Brand New Colony

A triumphant celebration of a great album, brought to life with a whole different energy.

When The Postal Service reunited for the 10th anniversary of Give Up in 2013-2014, their solitary album had already become a treasured part of the modern canon. It had become both a critical and commercial success, it had directly or indirectly inspired a number of other acts who had continued to bear its torch once Gibbard and Tamborello had returned to their main projects, and even if it was always going to be a lightning-in-a-bottle of a record it had long since accrued enough cultural capital that it couldn't be dismissed as just a side project among others. Give Up was its own story and it had cultivated an audience to match. That is to say, the obligatory reunion tour came with expectations, both in the minds of the fans and The Postal Service themselves. And, well, there's a reason why Everything Will Change saw an audio release over half a decade after its original 2014 DVD-only issue, and only part of that is because every single act in existence released an archival live album during the 2020 COVID lockdown heydays; the other part is that this really stands as a testament to the effect the album had.

In terms of the setlist for the concert captured here, you couldn't really ask for a more comprehensive or better built set. All ten tracks of Give Up are present, of course, shuffled up for maximum flow and appropriate build-up of stakes. You've also got the two newly unearthed songs from the then-recent deluxe reissue of the album which perfectly fit part as the continuum when presented alongside the established canon. The set is rounded off by two of the stand-out b-sides from the album sessions ("There's Never Enough Time" and could've-been-on-album "Be Still My Heart"), an appropriately brought out version of Dntel's "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" which kickstarted the whole idea of Postal Service into motion in the first place, and a bit more unexpected cover of Beat Happening's "Our Secret". The setlist ticks pretty much all the boxes there are and it's a strong look back across the entire era it represents, and it's impossible to fault it - even "Our Secret", while the most extraneous part of the tracklist, sounds like a lot of good fun and doesn't come across like a piece of filler that's stealing the place of e.g. one of the other b-sides. Big part of that is courtesy of the strong performance by the line-up presented here: Gibbard and Tamborello are accompanied by Jenny Lewis and Laura Burhenn in miscallenous additional instruments and backing vocals, and the four-piece line-up not only makes the programmed-by-nature indietronica sound come to live a little more fleshed out, but also beefs it up. Everything plays out louder and bolder than on the album, and never to the detriment of the songs.

What makes this an extraordinary live release however is the feel of it. I alluded to it in the opening paragraph but Give Up wasn't just a popular part of a wider back catalogue at this point, it was an iconic album in its own right and the lack of an official follow-up had made it all the more special. The audience knows it and most importantly the band knows it, and so the reunion tour wasn't just a chance to play some songs live for those who missed it the first time around: it's victory lap in honour of the original work's success. They are clearly as excited as the audience and the treatment they give to the songs comes across as a celebration shared between the two sides of the stage. Everyone gives 200% of themselves to each song and both the energy and warmth are tangible, and so many moments across the set sound like little moments of triumph, of fireworks going off in tribute to a deserving victor: the commanding way Lewis takes the lead vocals in the duet portion of "Nothing Better", how "A Tattered Line of String" practically explodes out of the gate as a muscular showstopper no one perhaps expected from a "token new song", how "Such Great Heights" sounds like the biggest song in the universe as it plays out, the kick-off of the live drums in "This Place Is a Prison" sounding bigger than ever, how sweetly nostalgic "The Dream of Evan and Chan" sounds even if you don't have a real relationship with the song, even how Tamborello suddenly sings the chorus of "Sleeping In" and the audience greets him with a loud cheer. Nothing exemplifies this any better than "Brand New Colony" which closes off the entire night (it even gives this album its title), from the moment it rushes through its verses in joyous fervour to how the band build its outro into a colossus of pure overwhelming, blissed-out emotion: it sounds legitimately epic and isn't just the definitive version of the song, but this live take is very likely my favourite song The Postal Service have ever released. It's the sort of show-closing rendition that makes you feel like you've witnessed something special, even if you're only just listening to an audio recording of it, and that what The Postal Service achieved was something genuinely unique and magical. Of course it wasn't, a rational mind pushes back, but that's not the point - the point is that the strength of the finale and the whole concert overall has the power to make you believe that was the case. That's wonderful.

So much so that I would consider Everything Will Change as an essential companion to Give Up. It sees the original album and some of its surrounding material re-assessed after a decade of both additional experience as well as of the songs having had the chance to live and grow into something bolder and more appreciated than they were when they first appeared as those beautifully homely renditions presented in the album. It's not transformative nor does it replace Give Up but it supplements it, underlining the greatness of the songs while highlighting their enduring resonance. It's certainly among my all-time favourite live albums, one which hangs tight as a listening experience onto its own and not just something to pad out the shelves of the most curious fans. By this point in 2024 (following another reunion tour) it's still the last "new" material released under The Postal Service moniker and honestly, that's fine - I can't imagine a better chapter closure and credits roll than this.

Physically: The 2023 CD issue comes in a square gatefold; no booklet, but the little cover slip for the CD has all the basic credits. Would've been nice to have a booklet or something, but I guess if you want any visuals you've got the DVD version.