‘The stakes have changed a lot’
Washington’s soft rock band Death Cab for Cutie comes out with Kintsugi
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Kintsugi is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery. Often, this is done with lacquer infused or dusted with pulverized gold, silver or platinum. The metallic veins highlight the beauty of the reformed piece.
The eighth album from Bellingham, Washington’s Death Cab For Cutie is titled Kintsugi. It represents something of a reforming of the melancholic indie rock band formed in 1997 as it hits the road in support of the record without founding member Chris Walla on guitar.
Walla, who was also frequently the band’s producer, played his final gig with the group on September 13, 2014, at Victoria, B.C.’s Rifflandia Music Festival.
“The stakes have changed a lot since the beginning for us, for sure,” says Harmer. “It’s strange, that as time goes on we do our best by looking inward and checking in with our own creative instincts and seeing if this feels good and right to us or not. It’s easier to block out a lot of the distraction and just believe in the work we’re doing and stay focused on the things we have control over.”
Specifically, the things that lead songwriter and lyricist Ben Gibbard has control over. As long as he’s feeling right, Harmer says Death Cab For Cutie is OK.
Although the singles from Kintsugi haven’t charted as high as past ones, the album was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Rock Album category.
“We don’t have any expectations going into the next album other than that we are engaged with it as artists,” he says. “We’re pretty familiar now with reviews that say the record is a dog and ones that don’t, and just rely on the evidence of the attendance at shows to let us know if we are putting out music that keeps both us and the audience interested.”
Perennial AAA radio staples such as Soul Meets Body, Crooked Teeth and the crowd favourite I Will Follow You Into the Dark from 2005’s Plans and You Are A Tourist from 2011’s Codes And Keys are all but certain to be in the set list. Harmer says that the new songs are really energizing the present touring unit of Harmer, Gibbard, drummer Jason McGerr and guitarist/keyboardists Dave Depper and Zach Rae, who fill in Walla’s vacant spot on the tour.
He says that it would be disingenuous to deny the huge change that Walla leaving left on the band, but that there was no doubt that he was ready to move on and felt stagnated.
“Our immediate concern when Chris left wasn’t that we would have any trouble finding someone who could do his parts live,” says Harmer. “But the challenge of finding someone who could work on that weird, undefined chemistry level that happens with musicians when they have to tour and move forward together was scary. Dave and Zach are certainly going to be there and it will be different but won’t stray too far as the core remains Ben’s writing and voice.”
Now that it has nearly two decades under its belt, think pieces have come out that posit the conceit that Death Cab For Cutie is one of the best soft rock groups on the scene. They certainly never had much in common with the Pacific Northwest scene they came out of and there are no plans to do a side project as a Tad cover band in the plans.
Produced by Rich Costey, whose credits include Sigur Rós, Muse, Foster the People and Santigold, Kintsugi snaps. The slick groove of Good Help (Is So Hard To Find) and pulsing The Ghosts of Beverly Drive rate among the band’s best.
“It’s a long way from that first album recorded in a friend’s living room on borrowed equipment to the second with two mics and a 12-track analogue machine,” says Harmer. “Now we have an internationally acclaimed producer in a state of the art studio and, for
We don’t have any expectations going into the next album other than that we are engaged with it as artists. NICK HARMER BASSIST, DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE
us, the thing that will be important as we go back in studio to keep making records is that we stay — as Ben’s lyrics always do — in the present tense and don’t repeat ourselves.”
Barring any Uber challengers arising, Death Cab for Cutie rides on.