Cath… – Death Cab for Cutie
I passed judgment too quickly on their last album (the slightly lackluster but often beautiful Plans), so I’m going to wait a long time before I officially declare this one a dud. But in the meantime, let me just suggest that the latest effort from one of my favorite bands of the early aughts is…well…a bit of a dud. Death Cab has always been a band who mixed in their fair share of washouts along with the great songs. But up until now they’ve kept the balance firmly on the positive side. There were the virtually flawless records (The Photo Album and the Forbidden Love EP), and those that mixed some weak tracks with at least one track that could leave you speechless (“Title Track,” for example, which completely made up for the dull points over the rest of We Have the Facts…)
This time, though, the noise to quality ratio has tilted strongly in the wrong direction. The one thing you’re likely to get from almost any review of Narrow Stairs is a mention of how they’ve moved back to some of their more lo-fi dark indie rock roots. Gone is the wall-to-wall mainstream feel that infused some of their more recent works. However, what many reviews seem to gloss over is that the stylistic revival has not been accompanied by the quality of songwriting that characterized those early records.
To make things worse, they’ve held onto some of the more annoying efforts to liven up their sound. “Bixby Canyon Bridge,” for example, is like a bad 2001 Death Cab song combined with a bad 90s jam-rock band. “I Will Possess Your Heart” begins with a preposterously long introduction that is tedious within the first 45 seconds and agonizing after four and a half minutes when it abruptly ends and feeds into a song that wants to wants to make you feel the beat but can’t bring even an iota of warmth. “No Sunlight” sounds to me like a b-side throwaway from the Transatlanticism sessions.
Going back even further, Narrow Stairs features a number of songs that remind me a great deal of Something About Airplanes, but none even remotely approach the bite of a “Champagne from a Paper Cup” or the delicate power of a “Your Bruise.”
Combine this with the painful sweetness of “The Ice is Getting Thinner” and “Your New Twin Sized Bed” and you are left with a record of two minds. One that is cold and lifeless – another that tries much too hard to pull your heartstrings. What made earlier Death Cab albums so fascinating was Ben Gibbard’s talent at bringing these two worlds together. This time around, however, it is mostly a failure – like a 13 year old kid and his father’s business partner sitting alone at a table trying to avoid making eye contact while the parents are in the kitchen.
The one clear exception to all this being “Cath…” which has quickly become one of my of favorite Death Cab tracks. Here, the impeccable timing between the percussion and guitars, the bass and vocals, creates an immense buildup. It is a strong addition to their catalog and demonstrates that Gibbard still knows what a perfectly constructed song sounds like.
All that said, I expressed dismay at Plans around this time three years ago and much later came to appreciate it a lot more. So we may have to wait and see on this one, too.