I think the first time I heard Death Cab For Cutie was in the OC. That show was pretty good for a while, and there was that season where one of them worked in a bar so that they could have bands playing in the background. Looking back on it, it seems like kind of a blatant way to emphasize their role as a tastemaker, but blatantness aside, I guess I’m thankful for the introduction. Death Cab isn’t really a mainstay for me, but they are consistently enjoyable. Narrow Stairs keeps that up.
(I tried to find a youtube video of them playing The OC to link to, but all I could find was a german dub. It’s pretty surreal. Enjoy.)
The first single for this album is called “I will possess your heart.” It has maybe 4 minutes of build up before Ben Gibbard starts singing, which some might find excessive, but I think is worth being patient for. When the song kicks in proper, it doesn’t feel unnecessary. I don’t know what it does exactly, but I like it. It makes the song seem more important, even though without the long opening it would be just another pretty good song on the album. Okay, maybe it’s unnecessary.
“Cath…” is the next single (why am I focusing on the singles?) and it’s pretty pretty, if a little beentheredonethat. It’s a song with a story to tell about a gal named Cath who’s having second thoughts at the altar. I really like this lyric:
As the flashbulbs burst
She holds a smile
Like someone would hold
A crying child
Awww, right?
“No Sunlight” was an early favorite for me, what with its general bounciness and specific sense of being an actual rock and roll song from Death Cab For Cutie, which is weird, but pretty rad.
But now I have a new favorite.
Absolutely essential to comment on is the song “Grapevine Fires.” For me it’s the clear standout of the album, and worth buying just for it. The first comment on that youtube video is “Ok, now THIS is music!” I was going to say something about the song, but I guess that’ll do. No, that would be lazy, here you go: it’s so gorgeous, and gets the fuck away with the lyric “There I knew it would be alright. That everything would be alright.” I’m dying to hear a playlist of songs that contain that lyric and variants on it. They’re fucking endless, and the more you notice them the more trite it gets, but here Gibbard and co. totally sell it.
The rest of the album kind of blends together into something very pleasant but sort of bland. Sometimes that’s what you need to listen to. That’s a niche isn’t it? The production is really great. That Chris Walla fellow deserves credit beyond having a really cool name. The way the guitars sort of burble on “Your New Twin Sized Bed” is pretty and hypnotic. The opening shimmer of “Bixby Canyon Bridge,” the album’s opener, gives way to to a jarring ratatat of loud fuzzy notes which build to a great height, all the instruments coming together with the common goal of rocking out. I guess it’s just on songs like “Talking Bird” and “The Ice Is Getting Thinner”, these ballads with these slow, long notes without a lot of melody that lose me. They sound great, but the fidgety thirteen year old in me needs some kind of payoff for sitting through them.
How do you end a review again?
–Max Jacobson
I Ate My DVD Collection 
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