DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE SURVIVES BUMPY RIDE
Seattle band deals with negative fan feedback, personnel changes following the release of its seventh album
Death Cab for Cutie has a devoted fan base — and sometimes that just means louder disappointment.
The reaction to the Seattle band’s last album, 2011’ s Codes and Keys, could be described, politely, as “mixed.”
Released months before songwriter Ben Gibbard separated from then- wife Zooey Deschanel, the record felt slightly impersonal, with a keyboard- based sound that proved divisive.
Still, Gibbard would rather have an angry fan base than an indifferent one.
“I’d much rather be in a band that people feel strongly about, both pro and con,” he said during a recent promotional visit to Toronto.
“Even though, nine times out of 10, 99 out of 100, we’re not going to deliver what they want.
“I’d much rather be in that situation than be a band that people are just ambivalent about, ( like): ‘ Oh yeah, they have a new record? I’ll get around to it.’”
Death Cab for Cutie does, in fact, have a new record: Kintsugi.
During production, founding guitarist Chris Walla — who produced all of the band’s previous records — announced he was leaving the group.
Gibbard and bassist Nick Harmer talked to The Canadian Press about what Walla’s departure means for the band that was once an institution of independent music:
Q You had to find a producer for the first time. I read you didn’t want the record to sound specifically of its time — what did you mean?
A Gibbard: I think it wouldn’t have read well to longtime fans of the band if we just said: “OK, who’s the producer making the records that are getting the best reviews on Pitchfork?”
If we had gone with producer X who made that hot record everyone loved last year, it could have been perceived as us trying too hard to maintain relevance.
In actuality, I think we maintain relevance by being Death Cab for Cutie.
Q What effect has Chris’s departure had?
A Harmer: Initially, it wasn’t really a shock. It wasn’t a moment of anger and frustration.
In hindsight, there was a palpable sense of relief and release.
If there was any tension hanging around the four of us, it’s been this sense for a long time of Chris being pulled in two directions.
When he kind of made peace with that and decided the production career was the way he wanted to head, that really allowed us to all sit down together and just let go of the old baggage.
Q How do you feel about your last record, Codes and Keys?
A Gibbard: It seems like there’s a pattern that I don’t want to get into, where we release a new record and then I’m always talking about all the things that were wrong with the record before.
I decided, for probably a lot of reasons that maybe my therapist ( would want to talk about), that I didn’t want to share a lot about my life at that time.
If there are things about the record that people don’t like, it kind of starts and ends with that.
There’s this style of guitar playing that’s been present on most of our records that’s not there, and there’s also a style of songwriting, lyricism ... that’s not there.
So I can understand why some people didn’t like the record. I think there are some really great moments on it, but ... I can see why people would say that’s the record they like the least. Well, yeah — because that one is least like the other six.
It was our seventh album. At a certain point, you’re just less precious about each record. The seventh album means less in the grand scheme of the discography than the second record.
The second record’s like, “Oh my God, we gotta make a good second record or people are going to forget about us.”
The seventh record, it’s like: “OK, we made a record that wasn’t as accepted as we would have liked it to be. Move on. Let’s get to the next one.”