Death Cab For Cutie!

[Ms Magpie]

:o really? how? why? where? how was it?

[putainfromage]

ahaha, i waited outside the showbox after seeing him and he came out at about 1:30 with johnathan rice, jenny lewis and john roderick from the long winters. it was sexy. i took a couple polaroids.

 

and about an hour earlier, nick harmer and jason mcgerr came out :)

[stel-la]

Yeaah I want to know that too ! :P

 

 

edit

I didn't notice that i posted this after you

 

but I'm so jealouus!

[putainfromage]

here are a couple videos i took at the show too

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ayjyV8XOuk4

http://youtube.com/watch?v=_Yrj6s3hWGc

 

can you tell i almost shit myself when jenny came out?

 

 

i took a bunch more, but computer issues... suck.

[grids]

I like this band especially from their song " I Will Follow You Into The Dark", "TV Trays" and " This Char" I love it :heart:

[BostonSportsTD]

....bump

 

i just got a leaked version of narrow stairs... what i've listened to so far is VERY GOOD.

 

(and yes it's the real album... not the fake one released on april fools!)

[ApproximatelyInfinite]

ditto, i got the leak, and i'm in love.

 

i completely fail to see how it's different than their previous stuff minus "i will possess your heart," but i don't care because i think it's that good. i'm in love with "grapevine fires," "cath...," and "your new twinsize bed" in particular. absolutely fabulous. i like every single song on it.

[BostonSportsTD]

ditto, i got the leak, and i'm in love.

 

i completely fail to see how it's different than their previous stuff minus "i will possess your heart," but i don't care because i think it's that good. i'm in love with "grapevine fires," "cath...," and "your new twinsize bed" in particular. absolutely fabulous. i like every single song on it.

yea i completely agree, it's not that different at all. but i really like it so far so i'm fine with it. i haven't gotten completely through it yet but i loved 'no sunlight' so far.

[BostonSportsTD]

'you can do better than me...' is so sappy haha but i really like it. its very 'cute'. i really like the upbeat tune to it

[RunForTheHills]

Glad to see others picked up on the leak! Very good album! :dance:

My favourites are Grapevine Fires, No Sunlight, and Cath. I really like all the other songs too, but I think the ones I am least likely to listen to are Talking Bird and YCDBTM. I don't usually grade albums, but this ones about 8/10 for me. love it!

[BostonSportsTD]

just finished listening to the whole thing. i'm a little bit upset that there aren't more 'sad'/slow songs. i was really hoping for another 'brothers on a hotel bed' or 'i will follow..' i guess overall i liked it. i still need one more listen. i just count on death cab for the sad songs and they arent too many here. thank god for 'the ice is getting thinner'. probably my favorite on the first listen.

[BostonSportsTD]

come onnn... aren't there any more death cabbies on here???

 

i've decided 'you can do better than me' is also one of my favorites. i'm so excited to see them this fridayyyy

[JM-42]

I don't know what to think, some people say are disappointed, others that is the best thing since The Photo Album (eventought I think Plans is their best album). So I have decided not to hear it until is oficially released. I think it's gonna be very hard to beat "Title And Registration" as my favorite song of Death Cab, "I Will Possess Your Hearth" is pretty great but that first four minutes kind of bored me.

[BostonSportsTD]

i think it was a bad move releasing i will posess your heart as the first single... i think it might be the most quality song on the album and DEFINATELY less boring than everything else on it. i had such high hopes for this album after hearing IWPYH but the rest of the album just doesnt meet the same level of quality. i know at first i was posting that this album was very good but i was just being effected by the excitement of having a new album by one of my top 5 favorite bands. after many listens i'm severely disappointed. (the album isn't BAD at all just no where near plans/transatlanticism and nothing special at all)

[ApproximatelyInfinite]

i'm one of the ones that thinks it's certainly on par with the photo album/transatlanticism/plans, but i might change my tune when the novelty wears off. i can think of two major stand-out songs for me, and at least two others that i absolutely love, so i feel like i couldnt have asked for much more. i don't think that this is a passing fad for me...it doesn't feel like it will be.

[Ms Magpie]

I quite like the album, but I need to listen to it more.

[BostonSportsTD]

literally there are 0 standout songs for me. it's depressing... i keep listening to it hoping one will pop out at me and none of them never do. they are all so damn boring. for me it comes no where NEAR plans/transatlanticism. ugggh.

[the_escapist]

Maybe reading the Rolling Stone review you will like a little bit more the album

 

4 stars out of 5

 

Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard is the poet of a particular purgatory — the holding cell in your head that's filled with failed relationships and wrong roads taken. Death Cab's most memorable songs contain snapshots from its walls: Gibbard has sung about an incriminating kiss in a photo booth, discovering forgotten pictures of an ex in his glove compartment, and an especially bleak Kodak moment from a doomed marriage. On "Cath . . . ," from the band's new Narrow Stairs, he finds a girl "in a hand-me-down wedding dress," and the details feel like knife twists: "As the flashbulbs burst, she holds a smile/Like someone would hold a crying child."

 

That sort of heartbreak defines Narrow Stairs. But where Death Cab's past records made it easy to empathize with Gibbard's narrators, the group's second major-label release zeros in on characters who are often more creepy than cuddly. The result is a dark, strangely compelling record that trades the group's bright melancholy for something nearer to despair.

 

Death Cab's previous album, 2005's Plans, played to the impeccable craftsmanship of producer-guitarist Chris Walla, who has also made records with indie colleagues the Decemberists and Tegan and Sara. Plans was the sound of a band standing in open space, every note articulated. Its characters dreamed of flight, reveled in sunlight and saw endless possibilities. In one song, Gibbard imagined opening his arms to span the length of Manhattan, and musically, that's exactly what the band did.

 

Narrow Stairs does the opposite. Elaborate multitrack recording has been replaced with the sound of a band in a room: drum hits elbowing through overmodulating bass lines, feedback squalls obscuring piano and vocals, clotting the air like smoke.

 

The sense of claustrophobia even extends to the breaks between tracks, which are nonexistent or fleeting; songs are cut off by noise bursts or begin with the lurch of a tape-machine capstan. This fits the material — the album is as dark as anything the band has done. The most glaring example is the single "I Will Possess Your Heart," which begins with nearly five wordless minutes of midtempo groove-building before becoming a love letter from a stalker. "You gotta spend some time with me," he sings with a trace of menace, noting his reflection in his beloved's window as he cruises by, "and I know that you'll find, love/I will possess your heart." Restraining order, please!

 

It's playing against type for a guy with one of rock's purest voices — a vibrato-less, bell-clear high tenor whose choirboy quality only throws the darkness here into relief. "No Sunlight" documents the death of an optimist over a perky New Wave backbeat. The feedback-spiked "Talking Bird" portrays a passive-aggressive lover whose devotion seems tinged with loathing. And "You Can Do Better Than Me" — where a man decides to stay in a troubled relationship "out of fear of dying alone" — comes across as a jaunty, Pet Sounds-style organ-rock stroll. Who knew timpani and sleigh bells could sound so unnerving?

 

But the most indelible moment is "Grapevine Fires," a minor-key processional framed by churchy organ and electric piano. In it, a man brings his lover and her daughter to a cemetery, where the couple watch the girl dance against a backdrop of brush fires like those that ravaged Southern California last year. "I knew . . . everything would be all right," Gibbard sings, with an angelic chorus flaring up around the last word. But any certainty is wishful thinking. By the song's end, firemen "worked in double shifts." Whether they succeed or fail remains a mystery.

There are some heavy-handed moments. "Your New Twin Sized Bed" ("With a single pillow underneath your single head") and "The Ice Is Getting Thinner" are love eulogies whose metaphors feel a little too easy. But Gibbard's indie-rock blues still plumb emotional depths with remarkable literary detail. The songwriter has spoken about the influence that Jack Kerouac's end-of-the-road narrative Big Sur had on Narrow Stairs, especially on the opening track, "Bixby Canyon Bridge," a tribute to a Big Sur landmark. That song's narrator makes a pilgrimage to the sacred spot but finds himself "no closer to any sort of truth" than when he began. Still, by the end of this haunting record, Gibbard has gained a deep understanding of lovelessness and the way people live in its quiet wreckage.

 

 

WILL HERMES

(Posted: May 15, 2008)

[the_escapist]

narrow stairs is growing on me!!!

 

favourite songs: bixby canyon bridge and you can do better than me!

[amsterdam528]

Grapevine Fires is one of the best songs I've heard in a while.

 

EDIT: Let me ammend this. Gravevine Fires IS the best song I've heard in a while.

 

And about the novelty, sure there is some when the album comes out, but the way novelty works for me is that I just get used to the music. This song has such haunting lyrics tied with such chilling music. Together they deliver an effect I don't think will ever get old.

[claudiki]

I love them and I love the song I will follow you into the dark...is a little bite sad but any way is great! really soon is comming their new album! :)

[BostonSportsTD]

everyone is saying they like grapevine fires. im seriously like TRYING to like it but it all just seems so boring. hopefully it will grow on me...

[BostonSportsTD]

going to seeee them tonightttt. i'll try to keep track of the setlist and post it here! i'm hoping they stick to mostly old stuff :P

[~ Sandy ~]

Where did you get the new album ??

I listened to "I Will Possess Your Heart" and yep 4 minutes it's too long . . .

But I like it :)

[BostonSportsTD]

the new album leaked... it's pretty easy to find throughout file sharing programs and torrents and all that.

 

the concert tonight was pretty good. I saw them back in '06 and that concert was definately better than tonights mostly because the venue i saw them at in '06 was much nicer, i was front row at that concert, and the fans were much more active and enthusiastic (it was at the Boston Opera House). tonight i was supposed to see them outside at the providence peers but due to rain it was moved inside to a small arena on the Brown University campus. the building was crappy and the fans SUCKED... no one was singing along and for the most part everyone just stood around. however, death cab didn't dissappoint and still performed amazingly. they already sound very experienced with all the new songs and it seems they have been playing them for years. they also incorporated a lot of their old stuff which was great. the set list was as follows.

 

1. Bixby Canyon Bridge (sounded great live, one of my favorite new songs)

2. The New Year

3. Why You'd Want to Live Here

4. Photobooth (one of the best of the night)

5. Long Division

6. Talking Bird

7. Grapevine Fires

8. Soul Meets Body

9. I Will Follow You Into the Dark (amazing no matter how many times you hear it)

10. I Will Possess Your Heart (unbelievable, best of the night.)

11. No Sunlight

12. A Movie Script Ending

13. Company Calls

14. Crooked Teeth

15. Sound of Settling

16. Marching Bands of Manhattan

 

ENCORE

17. Title and Registration

18. Your New Twin Sized Bed

19. 405

20. Your Heart Is An Empty Room

21. Tiny Vessels

22. Transatlanticism (my favorite death cab song and one of my overally favorite songs of all time... so you can only imagine my joy when they closed with it)

 

overall, if death cab is coming to a town near you... i HIGHLY reccomend doing whatever you can to get to the show. not all of their music is exciting for concerts but they are sure to play everything with extremely good quality and emotion.