For as long as they\u2019ve been around, Death Cab For Cutie have had one of the most distinctive creative voices in rock\u2014supple minor-key melodies inhabiting otherworldly soundscapes, supporting songs of distance and disconnection, loneliness and longing.\u00a0 On classic albums like Transatlanticism<\/i> (2003) and Plans<\/i> (2005), they have in some sense (or perhaps just in this writer\u2019s head, but go with it if you will) given form and voice to an entire generation\u2019s melancholy.<\/p>\n
Brooding, of course, has its own aura of romance, which may or may not have anything to do with the fact that in 2009, DCFC lead voice and principal songwriter Ben Gibbard gave up the solitude of bachelor life to marry actress Zooey Deschanel.\u00a0 You could almost hear the band\u2019s entire fanbase shiver and whisper \u201cUh-oh\u201d under their collective breath.\u00a0 Does goodbye single life equal goodbye melancholy equal goodbye to DCFC\u2019s entire \u201cbeautiful gloom\u201d vibe?<\/p>\n
In the end, that worry seems to have been just one more reason to wait anxiously for the eventual 2011 release of Codes And Keys<\/i>, which arrives as not just a relief in its familiar washes of intricate, textured sound and plaintive vocals, but as a triumph, both a return to form and a fresh new chapter for the very much still-vital quartet of Gibbard, Chris Walla (production, guitars, keys), Nick Harmer (bass) and Jason McGerr (drums).<\/p>\n
Codes And Keys<\/i> finds Death Cab\u2019s music as willfully quirky as it\u2019s ever been, full of unexpected choices, but both richer and deeper in its melodic sense and, at discrete moments, noticeably more positive in outlook.\u00a0 Make no mistake, melancholy still rules these shores, but here the cool, familiar angst is cut through by occasional rays of sunshine.<\/p>\n
\u201cHome Is A Fire\u201d kicks things off with a skittering cymbal figure that\u2019s joined by a steady throb as Gibbard\u2019s faraway vocals come in over the top, slightly distorted, a dreamy moment that does a gradual build until, like so many DCFC tunes, it assumes an almost hypnotic quality.\u00a0 The title track follows immediately, another sinuous, pulsing groove to lose yourself in, a simple piano figure and backbeat decorated with soaring strings and echoey, rather Edge-like electric guitar.\u00a0 Gibbard\u2019s lyric, as evocative as ever, reads like a description of the claustrophobia that can descend at times on particularly intense relationships.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome Boys\u201d and \u201cDoors Unlocked And Open\u201d carry you farther off into the band\u2019s sonic vision, both featuring elaborate guitar figures that craft a mood through an almost hypnotic repetition.\u00a0 \u201cDoors\u201d in particular does a steady, intense, wordless build until Gibbard finally comes in with a patch of typically oblique poetry around 90 seconds in.\u00a0 (The tension of the guitar line reminds me of Last Charge of the Light Horse, another act with a long, difficult, memorable name and terrific musical sensibilities.)<\/p>\n
The complexity of sound paintings like \u201cYou Are A Tourist\u201d is remarkable\u2013layered, subtle, exotic and absorbing, vocals, guitars, drums, bass and various background textures all conspiring to construct a memorable melody.\u00a0 In a brilliant one-two punch, album highlight \u201cUnobstructed Views\u201d follows.\u00a0 Starting over with a gentle pulse that builds and just keeps evolving, the piano-based dreamscape circles and circles, trying on new angles on the same core melody until finally, suddenly, at the three-minute mark, the lyric begins and a whole fresh second half of the song blossoms, a song giving voice to the wonder of new love, one of the warmest songs they\u2019ve ever done, that runs another three minutes until it fades away in a closing swirl around 6:00.<\/p>\n
Evocative repetition over an underlying propulsiveness is again the order of the day on tunes like the soaring-chorused \u201cMonday Morning\u201d and \u201cPortable Television.\u201d\u00a0 On \u201cUnderneath The Sycamore,\u201d the urgency of the repetitions eventually feels almost sacramental, like a meditative prayer meant to draw enlightenment from your subconscious.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
That thought carries over directly into \u201cSt. Peter\u2019s Cathedral,\u201d in which Gibbard suddenly catapults over the somewhat familiar DCFC territory of life and death into a brief, intense colloquy on faith.\u00a0 A vignette about St. Peter\u2019s and heaven and hell, the lyric positions religion as either (a) \u201cquite a master plan\u201d or (b) a crutch constructed to help the human race deal with our collective fear of death.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Closer \u201cStay Young, Go Dancing\u201d is so uncharacteristically sprightly as to feel almost ironic, but I don\u2019t think it is.\u00a0 For one thing, its largely acoustic melody manages to sound both foreign and pitch-perfect for DCFC.\u00a0 It\u2019s simply another fresh tone being added to their sonic palette on this adventurous, absorbing, terrific album.\u00a0 Codes And Keys<\/i> finds Death Cab For Cutie back at the top of their game, spinning darkly poetic tales against hypnotic soundscapes capable of teasing emotion and insight out of the hardest hearts and heads.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":30693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7010],"rating":[5646],"class_list":["post-42366","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-death-cab-for-cutie","rating-rating-a"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/42366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=42366"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=42366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}