For over a decade, Death Cab for Cutie’s Benjamin Gibbard has been making daily pilgrimages to the studio. Cut off from the rest of the world, this recording space is where the band’s front man can allow his headspace to roam free, where ideas good and bad can be developed, and where he can sketch out the next batch of Death Cab songs.
After parting ways with long-time guitarist and producer Chris Walla following 2015’s Grammy-nominated ‘Kintsugi’, Gibbard is now very much the songwriting force behind the indie rock stalwarts. While Walla’s departure does lose a key component of Death Cab’s output, it has liberated Gibbard’s creativity and presses a reset button on a band that has been in the public consciousness for 20 years.
From those long days and nights in the studio, Gibbard – along with bassist Nick Harmer, drummer Jason McGerr and guitarist/keyboardist Dave Depper – emerged with 30 rough tracks whittled down to ten polished, darkly anthemic and personal songs. ‘Thank You For Today’ is the first sign of a clean break from the Death Cab many have grown accustomed to and one associated with Gibbard and Walla’s songwriting dynamic.
The Washington native’s ninth studio album flicks between a reflective tone and pining nostalgia, and an exasperation at the times we live in. It opens with the eerily haunting ‘I Dreamt We Spoke Again’, which has echoes of Depeche Mode as Gibbard’s heavily distorted vocals float over distant chimes.
It is an opener that immediately drags you in. It creates an overriding sense of loss that persists throughout the album. Whether it is the loss of innocence, the loss of youth or even the loss at everchanging surroundings. Gibbard ruminates on the latter notion on numerous occasions, the despondent ‘Summer Years’ follows a sense of yearning for those carefree days of yore.
The speed of change in his hometown of Seattle is used as a focal metaphor throughout. Lead single ‘Gold Rush’ – which features a sample from Yoko Ono’s 1972 track ‘Mind Train’ – has Gibbard pleading “please don’t change/stay this way/it didn’t used to be this way”, despite him being resigned to how his city continues to change. It is possibly the most self-referential track as he, like many of his friends, went to chase the dream in Los Angeles before returning to Seattle.
The constantly moving geography of the world features heavily in ‘Thank You For Today’. The poignant ‘You Moved Away’ speaks of artist Derek Erdman – a close friend of Gibbard’s – who left the northwest coast to head back to Chicago due to the rising cost of Seattle. The lo-fi whisper of Gibbard’s voice feels almost like a love letter to a past time where the sardonic art scene would make his city effortlessly cool.
There are trademarks of Death Cab’s knack for instant classics with both ‘Northern Lights’ and the delightful ‘Near/Far’ providing odes to his hometown. Despite the changes, it is a place that Gibbard cannot help be enamoured by. The curtain call of ‘60 & Punk’ is an excellent soliloquy of what the future may hold and the unknown it may bring, but feels like it is delivered with a knowing smile.
During recording, producer Rich Costey would end each session by saying “thank you for today” to each band member. While it originally was an in-joke, the phrase resonated and whether it was good or bad Gibbard, Harmer, McGerr and Depper would nod and repeat “thank you for today” – a mantra to live a life by.
TOM WALSH