That was how, on The O.C., Summer described Death Cab For Cutie's sound to Seth, the sensitive DCFC fanboy whose soul was illuminated by Ben Gibbard's songs, and who was given to issuing stern warnings such as: "Don't dis Death Cab."
The O.C. is long gone, though it's influence in establishing teen-targeted nighttime soaps as the preferred career launchpads for indie rock acts who aspire to the mainstream lives on. (See Anatomy, Grey's.) But Death Cab - whose name, in case you've always been wondering, is taken from a Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band song performed in the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour movie as a hint in the Paul-Is-Dead controversy - drives on.
And though the band's zeitgeist moment may have passed, its new album Narrow Stairs , which came out Tuesday, augurs well for its musical longevity. Gibbard, now 31 (and second from left in the picture above), is still a confessional singer-songwriter with literary tendencies - he's got a role in Office star John Krasinski's upcoming cinematic adaptation of footnote happy author David Foster Wallace's short story collection Brief Interviews With Hideous Men.
But Narrow Stairs' songs like bristling-with-energy "Long Division," edgy, claustrophobic "Pity and Fear," and rocked-out "Cath..." in which Gibbard watches a woman he might have loved walk to the altar in a "hand me down wedding dress," all make good on Death Cab's trademark melancholy with newfound punch and a compelling unease, with more than one guitar in the works. And that goes for the delicate, beautifully fragile "The Ice Is Getting Thinner," too.
Death Cab used to be a band of post-collegiate smart people who couldn't help getting bummed out, even as the wide-open rest of their lives stretched before them. Narrow Stairs is the darker, scarier sound of adulthood closing in.
The band performing in this clip is not Death Cab For Cutie. It's the Bonzo Dog Dand, from MMT, doing "Death Cab For Cutie." That's John Lennon elbowing George Harrison in the front row.
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