DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE: Gets Analog in a Digital Age

Deemed an ill-fit for the disc, the unnamed track was subsequently yanked from Narrow Stairs. In the past, they might have kept it around to arrive at 11 album tracks, but this time Gibbard brought 15 finished tunes to the table. “This, really honestly, is the first record we’ve ever had where we can all definitely say that we have more than enough album-contending tracks. With the last couple albums, we had enough material, but we didn’t have a lot of wiggle room. Like, ‘If we can’t make this one work, I don’t know what we’re going to do.’”

“And you know, I’ve dealt with this guy…” Gibbard explains, “who is a reputable music industry douche bag that will remain nameless. And when we were recording the major label debut, he did say one insightful thing that will remain with me. And that’s, ‘The problem with albums these days is that they’re just too long.’ People lose track of the fact that just because you can put 74 minutes of music on CD, there’s no reason for it, and you don’t get any real value by giving people more music that they don’t want to listen to. It’s probably better to have an album with 10 or 11 really solid tunes that are really economical…where you maybe had to make some tough decisions to slice that record down to 40 minutes. Otherwise, you might compromise everything you might have accomplished thematically.”

One of the 11 songs slated for Narrow Stairs is “Talking Bird,” captured entirely live. “I got the vocals live and in playback I thought, ‘I could have never sung it that way if I was sitting in the room with a microphone putting my vocal part over it,’” DCfC’s frontman says. “I think it’s so much more of a gratifying experience, because you’re hearing the song back immediately after you’ve put it down, and that’s a real rarity…especially these days.”

“That doesn’t happen that often when you’re puzzling it all together,” he continues. “And making a record like that isn’t all that inspiring. Don’t get me wrong, we’re all very proud of Plans [which reaped the singles “Soul Meets Body” and “Crooked Teeth”], but there’s an added level of satisfaction when you put on an album and remember how the stars all aligned for four minutes that day, and the band just nailed that song together. I’d say that’s one of the reasons this is turning out to be my favorite album that we’ve ever done. It just feels like an album made by a band, instead of a recording made bit by bit while the other guys are out of the room playing PlayStation. With Plans, I can honestly remember recording in that barn in Massachusetts, watching The Sopranos while Jason was doing his drum tracking. And that just doesn’t feel like a band experience.”

After capturing its first four records on two-inch tape and then flipping to the digital format RADAR for Plans, the band’s live-to-analog approach was what Chris Walla calls, “The right decision based on the material…Plans wasn’t the kind of material we could just play live right off the bat. The album was very much more of a construction project, where Jason would go play drums on the scratch track. Then we’d get that perfect and add the bass, and we’d be watching the tuner-to make sure that was perfect.”

“Plus,” Gibbard intones, “I think I speak for all of us when I say that we were trying to play down the pressure we were feeling as far as the major label debut thing goes. Although we told the press Plans was no big thing, I think we were clearly nervous and a little more affected in the way we put music together. One of all of our favorite records of the last year was that latest Wilco record [Sky Blue Sky]; they did that almost entirely live to tape. We’ve had these experiences over the year and a half following Plans where we did sessions for compilations and cover tracks, and we would do all that stuff live. Some of the engineers would tell us, ‘God. You guys are a really good band.’ And it started to seep in [that], ‘Yes. We are a really good band, and why don’t we just start doing this. Stop being freaked out about trying to make everything perfect.’ I give the credit to Chris that he’s able to capture and have a real ear for things. Like, there’s a live guitar solo of mine that goes down that’s just wacky out-of-tune and Chris is like, ‘No. That sounds great. People will listen, and they’ll get it.’ We all collectively wanted to go back and record a song and play it back and go, ‘Wow. The vocal sounds great. The drum lick Jason just did sounds amazing.”