"Whatever album somebody's entry point to this particular band was, it's going to most likely define the sound that they want us to have," Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard told Exclaim! in 2011, so it wouldn't be surprising if their new album, Kintsugi (due March 31 via Atlantic), ends up being some fans' favourite record. Longtime Death Cab for Cutie fans, meanwhile, will likely remain steadfast in their devotion to the first Death Cab for Cutie record they loved; they have their personal favourite, and time won't change that.
Death Cab's refusal to stagnate and adhere to the cerebral, sensitive indie rock sound they established early in their career following their 2003 breakthrough Transatlanticism — due, in large part, to the band's designation as indie nerd Seth Cohen's favourite band on teen soap The O.C., as well as rave reviews and a subsequent signing to a major label — has lost them a few fans along the way, but they've garnered legions of new devotees with each release. Indeed, their past three albums — 2005's Plans, 2008's Narrow Stairs and 2011's Codes and Keys — have all landed in the top five of the Billboard 200.
Picking Death Cab's three best records depends largely, as Gibbard notes, on your entry point to Death Cab for Cutie. If it was their 2001 album The Photo Album that won you over, it's unlikely that you prefer their more recent work; if you found them with Narrow Stairs, you probably like their last few records more than their first few. The band have gone through three stages of evolution that fans tend to favour; we'll call them the Indie Label Period (1997 to 2002), their Transitional Period (2003 to 2005) and their Major Label Period (2006 to present).
Thus, we've set aside our biases in order to pick the most significant album from each of three periods in the band's discography, which we'll delineate in Exclaim!'s Essential Guide to Death Cab for Cutie, below.
Indie Label Period (1997 to 2002):
Death Cab's Indie Label period begins in 1997, when they released a demo cassette titled You Can Play These Songs With Chords for Elsinor Records, and lasts roughly until 2002, after the band had released Something About Airplanes (1998), We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes (2000) and The Photo Album (2001) for Barsuk Records. These records are characterized by nimble, cleanly picked guitar lines, a focus on melody over rhythm and Ben Gibbard's plaintive tenor head voice, which gave their indie rock sound an emo tinge. Lyrically, Gibbard's self-deprecating and often sarcastic musings about life in one's 20s were hung on nuanced observations and descriptions of minutiae like champagne in a paper cup, lipstick on a cigarette filter and the lead of a pencil on a manuscript.
Essential Album: We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes (2000)
After establishing a slightly grunge-inflected, lo-fi sound on You Can Play These Songs With Chords and their official debut, Something About Airplanes, the band made a huge leap forward on We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, turning the sounds into something all Death Cab's own. Lyrically, Gibbard refined the clumsy metaphors of his previous work into sharper, more poignant observations, and the guitar interplay here is some of Death Cab's finest; as they'd age, their playing would swap the jittery urgency and intricacy of "Lowell, MA," "405" and "Company Calls" for something a little more settled and mature.
This is also the album on which they'd use quiet/loud dynamics most effectively: the moment the bass and extra guitar slide into "Title Track," the drums exploding on "Scientist Studies" at the 50-second mark and the towering crescendos of "No Joy in Mudville" are all transcendent moments that made We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes special.
What to Avoid:
Death Cab's 1997 cassette demo, You Can Play These Songs with Chords, is charming and fascinating, but pales in comparison to what they'd achieve once they refined some of the better songs for Something About Airplanes, and would be a difficult entry point for any new fan.
Further Listening:
The Photo Album is easily as good as Facts, as sprightly guitar lines, more incisive lyrics and the addition of piano on "Information Travels Faster" and studio filters on "Coney Island" added dimensions to the band's early signature sound.
Elsewhere, the band's Forbidden Love EP features some of Death Cab's most beloved songs, including "Photobooth" and "Technicolor Girls," while The Stability EP offers gems like "20th Century Towers" and the 12-minute title track, which they would shorten and re-record for 2005's Plans. To go even deeper, seek out their Sub Pop Singles Club seven-inch, Underwater!
Click to Page 2 below for Death Cab for Cutie's Transitional Period (2003 to 2005).
Transitional Period (2003 to 2005):
The shortest and, to my mind, most interesting period in Death Cab's career is what we'll call the Transitional Period, which the band underwent between the recording and release of Transatlanticism in 2003 and the release of 2005's Plans on major label Atlantic Records in 2005.
Both records identified central themes — distance on Transatlanticism and death on Plans — in ways they hadn't on earlier records, and found the band stretching out and exploring prettier, more elegant compositions that incorporated piano and a less hurried use of time and space.
Neither of the band's two most critically acclaimed records sit comfortably in either the Indie Label Period (1997 to 2002) or their Major Label Period (2006 to 2014); Transatlanticism and Plans are too grandly arranged and universal to compare to We Have the Facts or The Photo Album, but they're also too intimate, too focused on the minutiae of those universal themes, and too softly sung in Gibbard's mellifluous head voice, to be categorized next to their later major label releases like 2008's Narrow Stairs or 2011's Codes and Keys.
Essential Album: Transatlanticism (2003)
The band's exploration of distance on their breakout album makes Transatlanticism feel universal, but Gibbard's up-close focus on details like the nomenclature for his car's glove compartment ("Title and Registration"), the strong scent of evergreen ("Passenger Seat") or the back of his grey sub-compact ("We Looked Like Giants") negates that broadness and puts the album in a category all its own.
Death Cab take huge artistic leaps forward here — "We Looked Like Giants" and "The New Year" are epics that would have stuck out like sore thumbs on The Photo Album but work perfectly here — but they also mine their quieter, shuffling past for more delicate beauty on "Lightness" and "Tiny Vessels," the latter of which climaxes with the kind of thrashing that recalls We Have the Facts' loudest moments. At the centre of it all is the monolithic title track, eight minutes of meditative grandeur that the band would never quite achieve again.
This is Death Cab for Cutie's finest moment, the album for which this masterpiece was mere practice. (Indeed, Ben Gibbard has said in interviews that whenever he was stuck on a Transatlanticism song, he'd write a song for Give Up, which he found much easier to do, to get his creative juices flowing and get over writer's block.)
What to Avoid:
All heavy-handed metaphors ("Your Heart Is an Empty Room," anyone?) and themes, on Plans, it felt as though the band were struggling to create a sound that would suit their new major label status. This is the favourite of many a Death Cab fan, but it's aged poorly, and the album's lead single, "Soul Meets Body," remains the cheesiest song in Death Cab's catalogue. That being said, the album's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" and "What Sarah Said" remain timeless.
Further Listening:
For a taste of Death Cab's stellar live show, check out their 2005 John Byrd EP. Then, delve into the obscure Studio X Sessions EP, in which the band turn early songs like "Army Corps of Architects" and "Blacking Out the Friction" into gorgeous, piano-based masterworks.
The demo versions of Transatlanticism's songs included on the album's 10th anniversary reissue are worth a listen, especially the a cappella, beat-box version of "Lightness."
Finally, Ben Gibbard had a pretty famous side-project that you might've heard of from this time.
Click to Page 3 below for Death Cab for Cutie's Major Label Period (2006 to current).
Major Label Period (2006 to current):
By 2007, Death Cab were promising "Can jams" modelled after the Krautrock band's lengthy, mesmerizing musical passages, and they delivered on "I Will Possess Your Heart," the first single from their forthcoming Plans follow-up, Narrow Stairs (2008). On this album and 2011's Codes and Keys, the band revelled in a sound they only hinted at on their major label debut, featuring a more audible, beefed-up rhythm section, more swinging rhythms in place of straight-time songwriting and Gibbard's newfound chest voice, sung with more powerful and in a lower register to complement the band's new, driving sound. On Codes and Keys, they'd incorporate more synths than ever into their sound.
In late 2014, band co-founder and longtime producer Chris Walla would quit the band, staying only to finish recording their 2015 album, Kintsugi.
Essential Album: Narrow Stairs (2008)
On Narrow Stairs, Death Cab would right the ship after the jumbled Plans, finding that a stronger sound could suit the band if it supported bigger, more emphatic songs. On the distortion-laden "Bixby Canyon Bridge" and propulsive "Long Division," they cemented a more muscular sound that, although it jarred with their earlier, subtler sound, suited them well.
Suddenly, Death Cab were playing high billings on festival lineups, and they had the songs to deliver sets worthy of the status.
What to Avoid:
Codes and Keys is a mostly skippable endeavour; though it's got some interesting dabbles with synthesizers ("Home Is a Fire" and "Unobstructed Views" are among the best), it feels like the work of dilettantes more than aficionados, and the songs lack both the charm of their early albums and the punch of their later ones.
Further Listening:
Record Store Day has led to some pretty great Death Cab releases during their Major Label Period. There are some really interesting reworks of classic Death Cab fare on the 2014 release recorded from their collaborative tour with Magik Magik Orchestra, reaching back to Something About Airplanes; and if you're into dance remixes, there will be something on the Keys and Codes Remix EP for you.
Death Cab's refusal to stagnate and adhere to the cerebral, sensitive indie rock sound they established early in their career following their 2003 breakthrough Transatlanticism — due, in large part, to the band's designation as indie nerd Seth Cohen's favourite band on teen soap The O.C., as well as rave reviews and a subsequent signing to a major label — has lost them a few fans along the way, but they've garnered legions of new devotees with each release. Indeed, their past three albums — 2005's Plans, 2008's Narrow Stairs and 2011's Codes and Keys — have all landed in the top five of the Billboard 200.
Picking Death Cab's three best records depends largely, as Gibbard notes, on your entry point to Death Cab for Cutie. If it was their 2001 album The Photo Album that won you over, it's unlikely that you prefer their more recent work; if you found them with Narrow Stairs, you probably like their last few records more than their first few. The band have gone through three stages of evolution that fans tend to favour; we'll call them the Indie Label Period (1997 to 2002), their Transitional Period (2003 to 2005) and their Major Label Period (2006 to present).
Thus, we've set aside our biases in order to pick the most significant album from each of three periods in the band's discography, which we'll delineate in Exclaim!'s Essential Guide to Death Cab for Cutie, below.
Indie Label Period (1997 to 2002):
Death Cab's Indie Label period begins in 1997, when they released a demo cassette titled You Can Play These Songs With Chords for Elsinor Records, and lasts roughly until 2002, after the band had released Something About Airplanes (1998), We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes (2000) and The Photo Album (2001) for Barsuk Records. These records are characterized by nimble, cleanly picked guitar lines, a focus on melody over rhythm and Ben Gibbard's plaintive tenor head voice, which gave their indie rock sound an emo tinge. Lyrically, Gibbard's self-deprecating and often sarcastic musings about life in one's 20s were hung on nuanced observations and descriptions of minutiae like champagne in a paper cup, lipstick on a cigarette filter and the lead of a pencil on a manuscript.
Essential Album: We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes (2000)
After establishing a slightly grunge-inflected, lo-fi sound on You Can Play These Songs With Chords and their official debut, Something About Airplanes, the band made a huge leap forward on We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, turning the sounds into something all Death Cab's own. Lyrically, Gibbard refined the clumsy metaphors of his previous work into sharper, more poignant observations, and the guitar interplay here is some of Death Cab's finest; as they'd age, their playing would swap the jittery urgency and intricacy of "Lowell, MA," "405" and "Company Calls" for something a little more settled and mature.
This is also the album on which they'd use quiet/loud dynamics most effectively: the moment the bass and extra guitar slide into "Title Track," the drums exploding on "Scientist Studies" at the 50-second mark and the towering crescendos of "No Joy in Mudville" are all transcendent moments that made We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes special.
What to Avoid:
Death Cab's 1997 cassette demo, You Can Play These Songs with Chords, is charming and fascinating, but pales in comparison to what they'd achieve once they refined some of the better songs for Something About Airplanes, and would be a difficult entry point for any new fan.
Further Listening:
The Photo Album is easily as good as Facts, as sprightly guitar lines, more incisive lyrics and the addition of piano on "Information Travels Faster" and studio filters on "Coney Island" added dimensions to the band's early signature sound.
Elsewhere, the band's Forbidden Love EP features some of Death Cab's most beloved songs, including "Photobooth" and "Technicolor Girls," while The Stability EP offers gems like "20th Century Towers" and the 12-minute title track, which they would shorten and re-record for 2005's Plans. To go even deeper, seek out their Sub Pop Singles Club seven-inch, Underwater!
Click to Page 2 below for Death Cab for Cutie's Transitional Period (2003 to 2005).
Transitional Period (2003 to 2005):
The shortest and, to my mind, most interesting period in Death Cab's career is what we'll call the Transitional Period, which the band underwent between the recording and release of Transatlanticism in 2003 and the release of 2005's Plans on major label Atlantic Records in 2005.
Both records identified central themes — distance on Transatlanticism and death on Plans — in ways they hadn't on earlier records, and found the band stretching out and exploring prettier, more elegant compositions that incorporated piano and a less hurried use of time and space.
Neither of the band's two most critically acclaimed records sit comfortably in either the Indie Label Period (1997 to 2002) or their Major Label Period (2006 to 2014); Transatlanticism and Plans are too grandly arranged and universal to compare to We Have the Facts or The Photo Album, but they're also too intimate, too focused on the minutiae of those universal themes, and too softly sung in Gibbard's mellifluous head voice, to be categorized next to their later major label releases like 2008's Narrow Stairs or 2011's Codes and Keys.
Essential Album: Transatlanticism (2003)
The band's exploration of distance on their breakout album makes Transatlanticism feel universal, but Gibbard's up-close focus on details like the nomenclature for his car's glove compartment ("Title and Registration"), the strong scent of evergreen ("Passenger Seat") or the back of his grey sub-compact ("We Looked Like Giants") negates that broadness and puts the album in a category all its own.
Death Cab take huge artistic leaps forward here — "We Looked Like Giants" and "The New Year" are epics that would have stuck out like sore thumbs on The Photo Album but work perfectly here — but they also mine their quieter, shuffling past for more delicate beauty on "Lightness" and "Tiny Vessels," the latter of which climaxes with the kind of thrashing that recalls We Have the Facts' loudest moments. At the centre of it all is the monolithic title track, eight minutes of meditative grandeur that the band would never quite achieve again.
This is Death Cab for Cutie's finest moment, the album for which this masterpiece was mere practice. (Indeed, Ben Gibbard has said in interviews that whenever he was stuck on a Transatlanticism song, he'd write a song for Give Up, which he found much easier to do, to get his creative juices flowing and get over writer's block.)
What to Avoid:
All heavy-handed metaphors ("Your Heart Is an Empty Room," anyone?) and themes, on Plans, it felt as though the band were struggling to create a sound that would suit their new major label status. This is the favourite of many a Death Cab fan, but it's aged poorly, and the album's lead single, "Soul Meets Body," remains the cheesiest song in Death Cab's catalogue. That being said, the album's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" and "What Sarah Said" remain timeless.
Further Listening:
For a taste of Death Cab's stellar live show, check out their 2005 John Byrd EP. Then, delve into the obscure Studio X Sessions EP, in which the band turn early songs like "Army Corps of Architects" and "Blacking Out the Friction" into gorgeous, piano-based masterworks.
The demo versions of Transatlanticism's songs included on the album's 10th anniversary reissue are worth a listen, especially the a cappella, beat-box version of "Lightness."
Finally, Ben Gibbard had a pretty famous side-project that you might've heard of from this time.
Click to Page 3 below for Death Cab for Cutie's Major Label Period (2006 to current).
Major Label Period (2006 to current):
By 2007, Death Cab were promising "Can jams" modelled after the Krautrock band's lengthy, mesmerizing musical passages, and they delivered on "I Will Possess Your Heart," the first single from their forthcoming Plans follow-up, Narrow Stairs (2008). On this album and 2011's Codes and Keys, the band revelled in a sound they only hinted at on their major label debut, featuring a more audible, beefed-up rhythm section, more swinging rhythms in place of straight-time songwriting and Gibbard's newfound chest voice, sung with more powerful and in a lower register to complement the band's new, driving sound. On Codes and Keys, they'd incorporate more synths than ever into their sound.
In late 2014, band co-founder and longtime producer Chris Walla would quit the band, staying only to finish recording their 2015 album, Kintsugi.
Essential Album: Narrow Stairs (2008)
On Narrow Stairs, Death Cab would right the ship after the jumbled Plans, finding that a stronger sound could suit the band if it supported bigger, more emphatic songs. On the distortion-laden "Bixby Canyon Bridge" and propulsive "Long Division," they cemented a more muscular sound that, although it jarred with their earlier, subtler sound, suited them well.
Suddenly, Death Cab were playing high billings on festival lineups, and they had the songs to deliver sets worthy of the status.
What to Avoid:
Codes and Keys is a mostly skippable endeavour; though it's got some interesting dabbles with synthesizers ("Home Is a Fire" and "Unobstructed Views" are among the best), it feels like the work of dilettantes more than aficionados, and the songs lack both the charm of their early albums and the punch of their later ones.
Further Listening:
Record Store Day has led to some pretty great Death Cab releases during their Major Label Period. There are some really interesting reworks of classic Death Cab fare on the 2014 release recorded from their collaborative tour with Magik Magik Orchestra, reaching back to Something About Airplanes; and if you're into dance remixes, there will be something on the Keys and Codes Remix EP for you.