And despite all of this, their in-your-face-indieness never bother me the way it has with bands that have followed like Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon, Vampire Weekend, The National, or Daft Punk. I can't fully explain it, but it might be because their music is so much better than all of them, that it's pretty forgivable. They've always seemed less like they were doing it intentionally, and they've gone through a lot of change. Or is it growth?
I think that growth is sort of bullshit. People and things, specifically in this case, bands, are always changing, but calling it growth isn't always accurate. Just because somebody changes doesn't mean that they've grown.
Change and growth in music can be hard to tell apart sometimes. Let's look at the Beatles. Rock and roll/pop music was a different beast back then, but it's possible to look at their discography as if it weren't. They started out strong but with pretty typical compositions and album structures. Albums like Please Please Me and With the Beatles are so much fun and so wonderful, but it probably wasn't until A Hard Day's Night that they became legendary. But to me, Beatles for Sale, which went back to filling its track listing out by recording covers and the occasional forgettable song, was the break needed in the transitional period between their early pop hits and their long-lasting genius albums that this period resulted in: Revolver and Rubber Soul. I also feel that Sgt. Pepper's and Magical Mystery Tour were another transitional period into a more electric and cohesive feeling that didn't completely coalesce until The Beatles (The White Album) and Abbey Road, but we've probably talked enough about the Beatles for now. The point is, you can't see a transitional period until it's over, and I think that Death Cab For Cutie (heretofore referred to as DCFC) are in a transitional period.
To me, the three best DCFC albums are their 4th, 5th, and 6th: Transatlanticism (2003), Plans (2005), and Narrow Stairs (2008). I don't think I ever really gave Codes and Keys, which follows that run, a fair shot. I don't know why, but I listened to it a couple of times and somehow decided that I didn't like it, and I really haven't listened to it since. I've probably already heard Kintsugi more times than I've heard that album. There was just something about the initial sound that turned it off, and I'm not intelligent enough to figure it out. But if we allow a two album transitional period that begins with a new-ish (emphasis on ish) sound, and ends with a third album where the band really puts that sound together and succeeds, well then, Kintsugi is not that third album. Which is good to me, because that gives me hope for the next DCFC album.
It's also sort of ridiculous to be talking like this, because I already really like this album, there's just a sort of detached sound in Ben Gibbard's voice in these past two albums that doesn't hit me the way his voice used to. Compare the chorus in "Why You'd Want to Live Here" from 2001's Photo Album to the opening lines their current penultimate album's "St. Peter's Cathedral": I hear an almost cracking and straining (specifically in the oddly appropriate line: "We're not perfect but we sure try") in the former, and a silky smoothness in the latter.
It might be indicative of a larger problem, which is their recognizable lead singer. Since that three album high from 2003-2008, Ben has released a solo collaboration with Jay Farrar in 2009 and a solo album in 2012. He's become a famous person. He married and divorced a famous actress, not to mention the exact type of actress who's fans are the exact type of people who would probably love his band. He's featured as a Non-Player Character Follower in the latest World of Warcraft expansion, whatever that means.
Kintsugi doesn't have any long musical digressions like the end of "Bixby Canyon Bridge" or the beginning of "I Will Possess Your Heart." It does have a lot of very clear Ben Gibbard vocals, though. This isn't always a bad thing, but some of the bands real strengths are the way his voice can almost be another instrument in a messy sea of noise, or if it's not then as the driving force of the music like a percussive piece in "Styrofoam Plates." Instead, it's mostly Ben's voice on top of the music, sounding pristine, like he finally sold enough albums to get vocal lessons, and now he's that asshole who critiques every national anthem at every sporting event ever.
But with the complaints out of the way, we can finally talk about how good this album. Yeah, it's probably my 6th favorite DCFC, but theirs is a hard discography to crack into.
"Little Wanderer" sounds very classic, like some of the best pop songs on Plans - "Crooked Teeth" and "Soul Meets Body". The structure is classic, if almost a little boring, but the sound and the guitar licks in the bridge keep this song in the area of "could have appeared on any DCFC album."
I would love to see more like "Hold No Guns" from the band. The exact situation here isn't clear, although it almost reminds me of the post-apocalyptia of The Postal Service's "We Will Become Silhouettes" with the first verse's lines like:
"[there are no] metals hung from silken strands
To greet you at the finish
As we're dissolving into the sea
I only take what I can carry
As the council's combing through our debris
For the treasures we never buried."
The song is slow and lovely and lacks the electronica sound that kicks right back in with the very next song, "Everything's a Ceiling," which is based around a very cool idea (when you're down far enough, everything is a ceiling), but is a little bit jarring. I think that "Hold No Guns" could have been better suited closer to the end or the beginning of the album, depending on where other songs in this re-worked track listing would go, but most likely the end.
And "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" is probably the best song here. It's the one that is going to last from this album, the way that "Company Calls" and "Photobooth" have lasted from We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, or "You Are a Tourist" from Codes and Keys, etc. etc.
It's got great lines like "you wanna teach but not be taught," a fresh sounding chorus with clap-a-long moments, and at 4:03, it's significant without over-staying. It's got plenty of the Ben Gibbard thing where he punctuates every syllable very strongly, which I always love ("we are the ghost of Be-ver-ly Drive" - I guess you can't really communicate that by just writing. Ah well, tomato, tomato.)
If there's emotion coming from Ben on this album, it's hard to find, most likely because it's been glossed over and ironed out. I'm going to have to listen closer to confirm this, but it seems to lack any songs that aren't full of rhyming couplets or verses, and I think every song has a chorus. The raw emotion that comes with just splurting out a song without rhyming or stopping to repeat something you've already said, the way something like "What Sarah Said" does isn't exactly evident anywhere on Kintsugi.
Surely the title of the album, which wikipedia tells me is the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery with lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver, or platinum, is meant to refer to something metaphoric, like putting your life back together after one of your long time band members (Chris Walla) leaves and you've gotten divorced. But all I can think when I hear it is filling in holes with something that doesn't match everything else around it, and not even bothering to try and make it all a cohesive piece, resulting in a jagged look. It's a change, but I don't know if it's a growth. Not yet, at least.
Kintsugi comes out on March 31, 2015 and is streaming on npr right now.
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