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Death Cab for Cutie go walking on sunshine
BY SEAN RICHARDSON
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Last year was a big one for Death Cab for Cutie: their fourth studio album, Transatlanticism (Barsuk), debuted in the upper half of the Billboard 200, and frontman Ben Gibbard’s other band, the Postal Service, scored an electro-pop hit with their debut, Give Up (Sub Pop). Now Death Cab are out with Ben Kweller on a seven-week US tour that stops at Lupo’s at the Strand in Providence next Friday and Avalon in Boston next Saturday. The Seattle indie-rockers also have a cool new video, "The Sound of Settling," which was directed by Tomorrow’s Brightest Minds (Jet, Bad Religion) and co-stars a violent gingerbread man. On "The Sound of Settling," the music is as upbeat as the lyrics aren’t: pondering old age, Gibbard muses, "I’ll sit and wonder of every love that could have been/If I’d only thought of something charming to say." Over the phone from Minneapolis, Death Cab guitarist/producer Chris Walla has a pretty straightforward explanation for the track’s winning contrast between words and guitar. "The demo for that song had this real Elliott Smith quality about it. It was basically Ben’s part minus drums, and quite a bit slower. It was kind of dour, but it wasn’t defeatist — like, ‘I’m really looking forward to this point in my life.’ I was in San Francisco when I got that sack of demos, and I listened to them when I was driving back up to Seattle. As soon as that song came on, I had this idea that it should sound like ‘Walking on Sunshine,’ that it should have this big, ridiculous pop thing happening. I called Ben right away, and he was like, ‘You’re crazy.’ It almost got killed at several points during the sessions, but I love how it came out." Transatlanticism is a seamless collection that reconciles bitterness with romanticism and loud guitars with moody soundscapes. The gorgeous title track is an eight-minute long-distance love letter that features a swelling vocal coda credited to the "Barsuk Men’s Choir." "I think the reference point was Weezer’s ‘Only in Dreams,’ " Walla reveals. "You know, ‘What if it just kept getting bigger?’ The choir was a last-minute thing. The original idea was to have a vocal ad-lib at the end. We did a couple of passes through that, but it wasn’t totally happening. One of the ad-libs was this ‘c’mon, c’mon’ thing. We talked about it for a few minutes, and somebody decided it would be great if there were 67 people singing that part all at the same time, through the end of the song. So we made some phone calls, some people came down, and it worked out." As Death Cab continue their rise up the rock totem pole, they’re determined to keep their DIY cred intact: according to Walla, bassist Nick Harmer was only recently relieved of his de facto management duties. "This year, we finally hired management because it got to the point where Nick would be on the phone eight hours a day. He was like, ‘Look, I can’t do this.’ We’re still really hands-on about everything we can be — you know, this tour is the first time we’ve handed off T-shirt designs to someone else. Building a team of people who represent us the way we want has been hard. But we’ve been careful about it, and I feel like it’s going really well." Death Cab for Cutie appear next Friday, April 9, at Lupo’s at the Strand in Providence; call (401) 831-4071. Then next Saturday, April 10, they’re at Avalon, 15 Lansdowne Street in Boston; call (617) 423-NEXT.
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