Album Review: Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

I must admit right from the start that I've never loved Death Cab for Cutie. My first experience with the band came around the turn of the century when I…um…somehow got a copy of We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes. I thought it was a really good indie pop album with well-constructed, often poignant songs and charming lo-fi production, but I wasn't blown away by it. I was so not blown away buy it that I completely skipped (understandably) 2001's The Photo Album and (regrettably) 2003's Transatlanticism, only to return to the fold with 2005's Plans on the strength of "Soul Meets Body" and "Your Heart Is an Empty Room"--songs that mine the same shiny-yet-melancholy sonic territory as the Pernice Brothers, a band I admire greatly.

I should point out here that Death Cab is a band I have always wanted to love. When Ben Gibbard is on his game, there is no greater spokesman (in rock music anyway) for that peculiar form of contemporary American romanticism that elevates earnestness above all else. His best songs reflect the soul of the adolescent (certainly not meant in a pejorative sense) desire to believe in something and desperate hope that something exists to believe in. Christian bands and Emo bands reflect this desire, but point to fashion or Christ as the answer. Gibbard's answer is, I think, at least more honest if fairly unoriginal: Gibbard recognizes how nearly impossible it is to find that something to believe in and finds solace in communal experience, especially the little moments of understanding that occur between two people. I suppose you could call these love songs, but the romance on display in Gibbard's songs goes far deeper than the traditional idea of a love song: it's downright Platonic in its conception. The "me and you against the world" excitement of "Such Great Heights" is a good example, as is the "everything's fucked so let's create a new world in our minds!" optimism of "Soul Meets Body," which includes the lines, "But I know our filthy hands can wash one another's/ And not one speck will remain." If there's another rock band in America that has more faith in the human soul, I can't name them. Death Cab for Cutie is a precious commodity.

Gibbard's romanticism, however, is a two-edged sword: for every moment of zen-like clarity and understanding, there's an existential disaster about to happen, and Narrow Stairs seems more focused on the disaster than the triumph. In fact, the album could be seen as a loose concept album tracing the dark side of romantic entailment: desperation, dangerous infatuation, resignation, and desolation. Narrow Stairs opens with the incredibly depressing "Bixby Canyon Bridge," a meditation on desperation and suicide and, well, not being able to find one's way in life. It's typical of Death Cab, but it's also surprisingly compelling. Next is the 8-minute-plus "I Will Possess Your Heart," in which Gibbard adopts the persona of a creepy stalker. "No Sunlight" follows with the declaration that the sunlight in his life "Disappeared at the same speed/ As the idealistic things I believed/ When the optimist died inside of me." "The Ice Is Getting Thinner" ends the album with a dark mediation on a relationship that's on thin ice (get it?). This is a dark, dark album, and even those moments of glorious clarity are uncharacteristically depressing. "Grapevine Fires" finds the narrator declaring he's in the right place, even as he's watching "it all burn away" and realizing that it's "only a matter of time." The brightest spot on the album is a pretty little dity called "You Can Do Better Than Me" that begins with the line "I'm starting to feel we stay together out of fear of dying alone."

But is it any good? Well, yeah. The band sounds as good as ever. The songs are tight and the instrumentation is interesting and appropriate. The biggest problem I have with Death Cab is that Gibbard is not always on his game lyrically, and when he's not on his game, the results can be embarrassingly earnest. I suppose this comes with the territory, but it does keep Death Cab from receiving the critical acclaim bestowed upon more guarded American rock bands like Spoon or Wilco--bands that wear their hearts on their sleeves, but often couch their sentiments in nostalgia and abstraction. (Gibbard's lyrics, in contrast, are nothing if they aren't straightforward.) On Narrow Stairs this over-earnestness can be seen in the two "object songs" (songs in which Gibbard uses an object to extrapolate some greater meaning--think the glove compartment in "Title and Registration"). "Talking Bird" compares the narrator's lover to a talking bird, which can't bode well for their relationship, and "Your New Twin Sized Bed" in which he's an (ex?) lover lamenting the replacement of a queen bed with a twin. "But honey, two people can't really fit in this tiny…oh." These songs are a little too obvious for me, but they aren't horrible, and they don't detract from the fact that Narrow Stairs is a darn compelling exercise in existential despair and a damn good rock album.

Grade: B+