DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE ///
INTERVIEW DANA BUONICONTI ///
PHOTO BRIAN TAMBORELLO ///
DATE AUGUST 22, 2003 ///

"Everything will change," The Postal Service, "Brand New Colony".

Well, maybe not "everything," but many things will change. In fact, they're changing for Death Cab For Cutie right now, as you read this.

Lately, I've been having conversations about music with people who don't usually listen to indie rock. Specifically, these conversations involve my friends' discovery of the Postal Service through the favorable and fervent word of mouth. These discussions go something like this:

Me: What have you been listening to lately?
People: The Postal Service album. It's sooo amazing. Do you have it?
Me: Of course.
People: Do you like it?
Me: A lot...have you heard about Death Cab?
People: Someone from the Postal Service is in that band, right?

I like having this conversation for two reasons: 1. It's intriguing that the Postal Service has become a gateway drug for non-indie rock fans and 2. It means more people are inevitably listening to Death Cab for Cutie. And after creating their most beautiful effort yet alongside the push from The OC's resident geek, Seth Cohen, Transatlantism (Barsuk, 2003) is gaining the momentum it deserves.

Things are changing in wonderful and difficult and unexpected ways for the Bellingham, WA foursome - the amount of fans, the demands, the expectations - they're all getting bigger.

"And I have waited, the anticipation's got me glued," Death Cab for Cutie, "Expo '86".

Four years ago, I stood in room with about 50 people watching Death Cab. Now, I stand in a room with 1200. And specifically, last summer, I sat on a hotel hallway floor in a semi-circle with Ben Gibbard, Nick Harmer, Jason McGerr, and Chris Walla - just before things started to change.

So who's the new guy?
Jason: I've known Chris and Ben and Nick longer than they've been a band. I grew up in Bellingham, where these guys all congregated to go to school. I played in a band with Nick before Death Cab. Nick made the smart choice to move on to playing with Ben and Chris [laughs], and I followed some five and a half, six years later.

What happened with Michael [Schorr, the previous drummer]?
Ben: This is always the hokiest way to put it, but it really comes down to creative differences. As with these kinds of things, you don't discuss your break-ups with people you don't really know. There are a lot of reasons that can't be discussed because if you're not there in the middle of it, you just wouldn't understand why it didn't work. We do have a lot of respect for Michael, and we think he's a great player and a really good person, but we just reached the point where it wasn't working anymore for a number of reasons, so we decided to let him go.

Ben, when you were writing for Transatlanticism, were you more conscious of beats because of the Postal Service?
Ben: Not really. There's only really one - "Death of an Interior Decorator" - where I wrote the song around a beat. When I was doing press for the Postal Service, some people were asking, "So, does this mean the next Death Cab record is gonna be all like electronic and beats?" and no...
Nick: We're all playing keyboards now [laughs].
Ben: Yeah, no more guitars. No, I've always felt really in tune with the rhythmic side of what we do, and watching someone program beats is awesome, so it's interesting to hear what people do rhythmically, like, Wow, that's a really cool shaker track, we could take that and put that against one of our beats but do it organically.
Jason: As a drummer, it's really inspiring to see DJs and programmers because they're not thinking about physical limitations. Like, Let's pretend I have five or six limbs - it's always good for me. I love listening to Squarepusher or certain DJ Shadow records where I'm forced to do things I normally wouldn't think of because of my physical limitations.
Nick: Then we have this guy [Chris], who takes that stuff and throws it through some box that he finds in the bottom of a bin at a used store and goes, "I think it's broken, but it makes a noise and it sounds cool - let's just record it and that'll be it." It's all about being playful with that stuff. "Title and Registration" is a great example of starting with one drum beat that then got put through some weird box and ended up being drum machine-y, but it's not - it's a live drum recording.
Chris: Yeah, there are no loops or samples on the record except for the first half of "Transatlanticism."

The piano and acoustic guitar throughout the album really open up the band's sound. Was it a conscious decision to add new instrumentation before recording?
Chris: We knew going into this record that we didn't want to make a record that we had already played live. The Photo Album's arrangements all pretty much got cemented on-stage, and then when we got into the studio we had two guitars, bass, and drums on a lot of them, so we were like, "That's done." By not having played [Transatlanticism's] songs live, we weren't attached to particular instruments. I had such a great time making this record. I think this is the first record we've made that hasn't been wrought with some sort of timeline tragedy or meltdown - it just went really smoothly.
Nick: Sometimes it was conscious, but we didn't let it constrain us. You know, Let's do it now and then figure out how to do it live.

Sequencing "Tiny Vessels," "Transatlanticism" and "Passenger Seat" together creates a very intimate, emotional center for the album. Was that focal point intentional?
Ben: Putting the record together is always the hardest part. I think it was Chris's decision was to have them mesh into one long piece. I think that that lends itself really well to having it be the focal piece of the record. I think there was a time when we were sitting there going, "Can "Passenger Seat" follow "Transatlanticism"? They're both piano songs, is that going to work? Is that going to sound stupid?" But once we heard how it all flowed together, it was perfect. It was kind of a happy accident. I think we got really lucky.
Chris: I'll take a little bit of credit for some of it [Laughs]. When I'm recording a record, if two songs are in the same key, and there's something that tails out and you can get something to tail in, I can't resist tying them together.

Ben, travel and distance - both physical and emotional - continue to be constant themes in your lyrics. Why the fascination?
Ben: Ever since we started this band we were always out the door, always traveling, always touring. And whenever we weren't touring, I was going on trips, or just away from home. I had this realization after we'd been touring for The Photo Album, that, "Wow, it's crazy how relationships - friends, lovers, whatever else - always suffer when you're away." For the longest time I've just been going, going, going and never really thinking about anybody who was back home. Sorry, I'm on tour, I gotta do my stuff. As you get older and you cease sharing experiences with people, it's hard to have anything to talk about anymore, especially as we continue to do this. We get farther into the function of being a working band and friends that you had that don't do this, or people that you dated, it's like you have nothing in common anymore. I find myself going, "Wow, I can't believe how many people I used to be really close with that now I don't talk to anymore." Not that I choose not to talk to them, but I'm always gone or when I'm home it's really difficult to connect to people when you live in this weird alternate universe. I think, in my own head, anyway, there's been a shift from the glory and romance of travel and being far away from people to "Wow, there's a part of this that really sucks."
Chris: When you've been touring for six months, sometimes you don't think about it so much, but when we were making this record, there were a lot of these songs that hit me pretty hard when I first heard them. It's really hard for me, if I'm trying to write a song, to put it into words, but Ben does a phenomenal job of wrapping up all those little pieces and experiences into this little trinket cloth that's got a bunch of drink tickets and safety pins and buttons and whatever else.

If there was a movie made about Death Cab, who you want to play you, and who would you want to direct?
Nick: I would want Sam Rockwell to play me.
Ben: I'll say George Clooney.
Nick: And maybe we're not a band in this movie, maybe we're a crime-fighting team or a group of criminals.
Chris: I'm thinking more on the Cody Banks tip.
Ben: Can I just say Woody Allen?
Nick: And it would have to be directed by David Lynch.
Chris: What a fucked-up movie [laughs all-around]. ///