Narrow Stairs

Death Cab for Cutie - Narrow Stairs

Normally the Monday slot is reserved for bands that I'm thinking well of at the moment, bands that are touching me emotionally and making me want more, but with Death Cab's latest release I have to buck the trend as I these guys are touching me like a Catholic Priest (that is to say, all wrong). 

Now I will admit, I was a late bloomer when it came to Death Cab.  I didn't watch the OC, so I kind of missed them when they rose to indie super-stardom.  I did hear their version of the Cure's "Love Song" on a charity album, and I thought "Wow, great cover, who are these guys?".  This thought led me to Plans, a decent album, with one of the few songs that has ever made me cry simply by listening to it (What Sarah Said).  So I decided to go further back in time and check out what I describe as their best album "We have the Facts and we're voting yes".  This was a fantastic piece cultural history.  It encapsulated the indie-pop scene at its most inventive.  The lyrics were poignant, poetic, and bizzare.  The music was not formulaic but creative with odd timing, odd harmonies, and tantilizingly good.

It seems now that as DCFC moved towards making Mischa Barton's panties wet, they forgot everything about what made them good in the first place.  People enjoyed them because they were different, they sung about different things, they were honest.  With their latest release "Narrow Stairs", Death Cab has showed that they have not progressed musically.  Any of the songs on this album could easily fit on Plans or Transatlanticism.  The vocals, the bass lines, the gutiar sounds, are all stuff that we've heard before.  There is nothing innovative on this album.  The music isn't helped by the lyrics, which like Plans and Transatlanticism focus almost entirely on emo-love imagery.  There's nothing political, nothing evocative, nothing to make me tear up like "What Sarah Said".  This is just a hollow album by a group that is obviously comfortable with its position as indie-geek-emo tunes played for depressed silver-spoon teenagers.  Hopefully they will realize that their best efforts happen when they are not trying to please the masses.

Wake me up when they come up with something interesting and new.