w/ the Prom, all-ages early; w/ the Prom, Aveo, 21+
Crocodile, Fri Oct 5, $10
DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
The Photo Album
(Barsuk)
***1/2
Death Cab for Cutie has always felt perfect and weightless, the kind of indie-pop band one could call gorgeous but not moving. Nothing by the Bellingham quartet has ever felt emotionally raw. Both Something About Airplanes and We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes were good, emotional pop records that walked an unassuming line, to the left of which was the existential heartbreak that singer-guitarist Ben Gibbard has always seemed wont to convey openly but never really has. Like many a literate songwriter, Gibbard sings love songs: little poems that illustrate fear and desire without ever articulating the base reality of a life ruled by fear and desire. Gibbard's poetry is pristine, and all crude impulse is sublimated in it, only ever hinted at in the snub of a cigarette or a fleeting glance at fingers around a rocks glass.
To the right of the line that Death Cab for Cutie has always walked is the aesthetic fascism of both Gibbard and guitarist-producer Chris Walla. The songs are always perfect. The pop is surgical, there is no mess. While such meticulous songcraft has certainly been a recipe for national acclaim, record sales, and top 10 lists, by the time last year's Forbidden Love EP was released it was easy to feel as though one had heard it all before. Death Cab's twee felt played out, and its plaint felt empty.
"Styrofoam Plates," from the band's new release, The Photo Album, smashes that perception. The song is a hate letter to its narrator's father, in three parts, beginning in the present tense with an image of the father's ashes being returned on the wind, stinging the narrator's eyes. There are no tears to speak of, only anger. "It's no stretch to say you were not quite a father," Gibbard sings. "But the donor of seeds to a poor single mother." His voice is characteristically flutelike, but it scathes.
The narrative then shifts to an image of childhood. The narrator recalls being 13 years old, at Thanksgiving dinner in a Catholic church, where "the charity reeks of cheap wine and pity." The servers wear crosses to shield themselves from the sorrow and suffering of the guests, and the narrator thinks of his father with the sort of contempt that only abandonment breeds. The song could easily be overwrought, but Gibbard grows more shrewd and embittered with every lyrical turn.
The song ends at the father's funeral. The mourners are silent as the priest gives a homily, addressing the father's virtues, inciting the narrator to genuine outrage. Gibbard wants to scream. He calls the deceased a "disgrace to the concept of family." The drums roll and the instruments swell to carry the song's end on a dramatic note. The last lyric is satisfyingly melodramatic: "He was a bastard in life thus a bastard in death."
"Styrofoam Plates" is characteristically well constructed, but nothing about the song is precious. Whether the story itself is a fiction is irrelevant. What matters is that once the song has come to an end and listeners have caught their breath, Gibbard no longer seems spotless. Gone, if only for the song's stunning moment, is Gibbard the immaculate. Instead, the song's resonance is that of a truly pissed off little boy who feels abandonment so deeply that it hurts him all the way to his teeth. "Styrofoam Plates" alone is thereby enough reason to call The Photo Album the band's most gratifying release to date.
But The Photo Album is worth buying for many reasons. "We Laugh Indoors" is propulsive and beautiful, culminating with a white-hot guitar crescendo and a distorted, screaming Gibbard. "Why You'd Want to Live Here" is an intelligent critique of Los Angeles and commercialism, and also perhaps the catchiest, most commercially viable song on the record. The haunting "Coney Island" is a piano ballad delivered over looping drum and guitar that recalls Lisa Germano's "Way Below the Radio." Its drippy, round sound lends The Photo Album a strange, hypnotic texture.
There's not a dud to be found on this new release. The Photo Album is one of the year's finest pop records, from a band that was overdue to make exactly that.