Audioholic Media

Lushing with the hallway congregation, my best judgment signed its resignation.

I remember distinctly the first time I ever heard Death Cab for Cutie. It was senior year of high school and I was sitting on Map’s bedroom floor working on a project for our sociology class when “We Laugh Indoors” came on. I remember thinking that it sounded completely different from anything else I was listening to at the time– though now Minus the Bear is occasionally reminiscent of them– and I remember thinking that it felt like a moment, like a place, and thinking that it sounds like the sort of song that plays the moment you know that something in your life has just shifted irrevocably. I also have some rather vivid memories of a different scene when that song was playing and life was changing indeed. Anyway, I’ve always really loved that song, and even though I wouldn’t say that Death Cab is one of my favorite bands, I have a certain fondness for them, wrought in large part through boys I have loved that have loved them.

It’s one of those bands that goes through a stylistic evolution every few years and gains or loses fans along the way. I think it’s a natural progression (I don’t believe in the “selling out” argument for anyone) and for me, their new stuff just doesn’t catch me in the gut the way their old did. (I truly despise “Soul Meets Body,” but I really love three other songs on Plans so maybe that’s not a good example). Death Cab is easy on the ears. It varies from mellow to slightly trippy and it sounds like its been stripped down and reworked. It says more by what it doesn’t say than what it does.

Someone burned me a live copy of We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes a few years ago and I have just about worn the thing out. Something about the album live brings out so much more depth and emotion than any of their (albeit good) studio work. “Title Track” is by far my favorite song on the album (actually, I’m about 90% sure it’s my favorite Death Cab song, period) and in no small part because it is incredibly bare. Raw, even. Ben Gibbard sounds less in control of his usually emotionless voice and the lyrics on this song are just not to be believed. “Talking how the group had begun to splinter, and I can taste your lipstick on the filter.”

It’s romanticizes the unromantic. There’s no love in this song, but it’s got a life. It feels real, living and breathing. You know how when you hit bottom you can laugh at anything? This song feels just like that moment. When you’re so down-and-out that you simply don’t care, you just want to clutch at anything you can lay your hands on. It’s about the moment, the desperation, the beauty in running with it. Even if you regret it in the morning.

This is a song that I frequently put on at the end of the day. Most of the time, it inspires me to write something, though occasionally I’ll just lay, listen, and let my thoughts scatter. And every so often, when I’m feeling particularly restless, I will dance, and I will wait.