Death Cab for Cutie formula ?

Also which album should I get if I have none and want one before the Death and Dismemberment tour hits Mpls?

"We Have the Facts..." is good but gets dull about halfway through. Still, it's the best thing they've put out.

As for the formula, I think they indeed have a formula but I'm not sure if it's New Order/BtS. New Order plus Built to Spill makes me think of, like 10-minute long indie pop songs with keyboard riffs and some dipshit singing NO-quality (read: crap) lyrics. Like Helium. DCFC sound like all those Jade Tree bands if they were good. Death Cab for Cutie = Promise Ring et al - badness.*

*Not the best example of a formula but it's the end of the workday and I'm lazy.

Built to Spill, Quasi and Death Cab for Cutie all sound to me like variations on a sound. BTS having big guitars and songs that want to be anthems, Quasi with their self-styled clever "punch-line" lyrics, and Death Cab with no particular gimmick, but consequently the least memorable version of the three. I don't get the New Order part.

i agree with the emo insinuations, the singer's current propensity for slow whine is a bit much to take. maybe they are the best example of slowcore emo although on their first record they did have some nice pop moments. i don't understand the new order comparison either unless you are comparing them to the dreadful new order of 'get ready'? probably better than built to spill just because they don't really do guitar solos.

Okay, let's put it this way... New Order + Built to Spill + hints of emo (Slint, maybe) = Death Cab for Cutie.

I've only done cursory exploration of the Death Cab catalogue. Do they have any other songs as good as "Bend To Squares"? I've yet to come acrossed them, if indeed they do.

Keiko - I think "Scientist Studies" off We Have The Facts ... is a pretty great song, probably my favorite DCFC song.

I should add that I saw the Death 'n' Dismemberment tour last night, and The Dismemberment Plan destroyed Death Cab. The Plan's closing Outkast/DCFC/No Doubt/50's easy listening medley over "Okay, Joke's Over" was brilliant.

Wasn't really asking for a comparison to the Dismemberment Plan/flash in the the pan, but thanks anyway... the Dismemberment Plan were just fine with 'Emergency etc,' but it seems there's little left in their armory. Isn't 'Change' just a retread? Back to the subject on hand... that being Death Cab for Cutie...

If you think it's just a retread I think you weren't listening very carefully.

Once again... this isn't a Dismemberment Plan thread... but, what the heck, have fun if that's all you've got.

Okay, let me rephrase on topic-wise: I saw Death Cab For Cutie last night and their live show offered little to no advantage over their recordings, and was subpar from them at points. And pretty every song sounded like a "retread" of another one after a while.

However, to be fair, they were substantially better than the last time I saw them play live.

Regardless, if you're just a fan of them (and not certain other bands that it's apparently popular to bash around these parts) I wouldn't get high hopes up for seeing them live on the Death and Dismemberment tour. I'd stay home and listen to "We Have The Facts ..." and save $12 or whatever they're charging in your neighborhood.

yeah, how is Change a retread? It's cool if you don't like it but to my ears most of it doesn't sound at all similar to Emergency & I.

...but, yes, back to the topic. What have Death Cab *ever* had going for them? I heard their new record the other day while looking around in a record store and was struck by how absolutely bland it was. They do seem to know their way around a melody, but... in the service of what? There are no distinctive traits... sort of like any number of B+ rate mid-90s indie bands-- let's take New Radiant Storm King, for instance-- with all the noise and asymmetry stripped away. Plus the vocals are totally fey indie-boy. If I thought there were any sort of personality or sense of discovery there I might be down with it, but... nah.

I think it's also sort of misleading to say New Order + Built to Spill + Slint = Death Cab, because Built to Spill and Slint (Slint?) were all somehow unique (I know too little about New Order to comment, except to say that I don't get how Death Cab sound like them). Built to Spill had the weird guitars and that hyper, joyous little voice... Slint was creepy and nuanced and in a way that few bands of their ilk tried to be at the time. To me, that's what made those bands good. Death Cab, on the other hand, seem totally by the numbers.

i think dcfc is a band that has lost its relevance ... in 1998 or even 1999 dcfc must have seemed poignant, but the photo album is their weakest album -- musically -- not because it's any better or any worse than anything they've done so far, but because the stakes are a lot higher now for 'emo/indie' bands in the wake of a lot of 'emo/indie' music that has pushed the genre a little bit (witness the textural pink floyd/mbv emo on the most recent appleseed cast discs) and a lot of 'emo/indie' music that has gotten left behind (whatever happened to pedro the lion? besides the obvious).

i don't think dcfc is about innovation or musical discovery, but their sound holds no water now. what they are and will continue to be is a band that is centred around some strong songwriting and real care put into the musicianship. plus, being a male and also being into dcfc is a great way to meet cute, intelligent women

by the way, although dismemberment plan is good i thought i'd share an anecdote: a friend of mine who is a huge dcfc fan but never heard dismemberment plan put on 'change' in anticipation of the tour and immediately crinkled up her nose in disgust.

"it sounds like dave matthews band"

rob

Not to pick on you, Charlie, but your complaints strike me as so weird and contradictory; they essentially fall into the trap of thinking that there is no point to anything being pretty, as if prettiness is a musical quality which denotes the absence of any effort. E.g.: There are no distinctive traits ... sort of like any number of B+ rate mid-90s indie bands ... with all the noise and asymmetry stripped away. Which in itself seems to peg a distinctive trait -- by that logic wouldn't the noisier, more asymmetrical Built to Spill be the bland ones?

But so long as we're formulating, replace New Radiant Storm King -- from your comparison -- with Delta Haymax, who fall a bit more out of place chronologically but are geographically proper and anyway play pretty much the sort of common-ancester missing-link plain-out indie- pop/rock stuff that answers the question: listening to them with this thread in mind would have you thinking "They sound like Built to Spill!" "Wait, now they sound like Death Cab!" "Wait, now they sound like Built to Spill again!"

But running with this common-ancestor theory leads you to the conclusion that Built to Spill -- late-period Built to Spill, anway -- injected crashing arena-sized hooks (plus that little jammy period of theirs) into that lineage, whereas Death Cab essentially drew on dreampop, or at least its feel. What bothers me about your post is that you seem to think of the former as doing something and the latter as doing nothing, as if music turns toward prettiness via some sort of unattended entropy. Whereas if you really want to talk blandness / personality, aren't there probably a lot more bands out there sounding like Built to Spill than Death Cab?

(That said, I prefer recent Built to Spill, really like Death Cab but in a semi-noncommittal way, and think that early Built to Spill now comes across like a bad version of Death Cab.)

They do seem to know their way around a melody, but... in the service of what?

Plus I can't believe this question.

The Plan's closing Outkast/DCFC/No Doubt/50's easy listening medley over "Okay, Joke's Over" was brilliant.

Indie rock bootleg! ;)

DOOM!

A salmon screams!

The title of this thread should be changed to "The Dismemberment Plan are way cool." :) My original x + y = z was just a lame way to see what anyone thought about Death Cab... there's only hints of those bands in Death Cab's style of course. And like Nitsuh, I see no problem with pretty, dreamy music. Sometimes things that are overly twee get on my nerves, but bring on pretty music. Oh, and I'll stick to the "retread" comment regarding the much-loved D-Plan (heck, I love them, too... or their music anyway). But for my money 'Emergency and I' was their grand statement... they're just coasting now, albeit mightily. And so this thread dies with a whimper. Death Cab, we hardly knew ya.

why i can't listen to that dntel album anymore: "her eyelashes tickled my neck/ and it was perfect". oh, and "he played every song/ fron 1993/ the crowd applauded/ he curtsied bashfully". that, and the music ain't too hot, either.

i forgot to add that those lines are from the dcfc collaboration on the album.

"'They do seem to know their way around a melody, but... in the service of what?'

Plus I can't believe this question."

Well, why not? With 40 or 50 years of great pop music behind us, why bother with a band that's ok with the "hooks" but utterly personality- free (accepting that premise that Death Cab are, of course). With so many great melodies out there, I don't know why you wouldn't choose the ones that come with interesting sounds or lyrics attached. I'm not exactly sure what your comment means, but I hope it doesn't mean that good melody = good music, because surely it has to be more than that.

"your complaints strike me as so weird and contradictory"

No, YOU'RE weird and contradictory!

"they essentially fall into the trap of thinking that there is no point to anything being pretty, as if prettiness is a musical quality which denotes the absence of any effort."

I didn't say that, and I have no doubt that Death Cab put a ton of effort into their records.

"E.g.: There are no distinctive traits ... sort of like any number of B+ rate mid-90s indie bands ... with all the noise and asymmetry stripped away. Which in itself seems to peg a distinctive trait -- by that logic wouldn't the noisier, more asymmetrical Built to Spill be the bland ones?"

Oh shit. Ok. Well, the first unexplained premise is that there are a ton of bands out there that sound like B+ mid-90s indie bands with all the noise and asymmetry stripped away. We get about ten CDs a week at my radio station that sound very similar to Death Cab (or that Death Cab sounds very similar to), and I don't think this is a new phenomenon-- for example, check out Seam's "Are You Driving Me Crazy?" from '95 or so. Not that who came first is the end-all of music liking, but I don't think there's anything I could get out of a Death Cab record that I couldn't have gotten from Seam 7 years ago. That sort of bothers me about Death Cab; maybe it shouldn't. I realize it's a very rockist thing to say. If I enjoyed Death Cab more than Seam it probably wouldn't bother me so much, though.

The second unwritten premise is that I see so much more possibility in asymmetry than in symmetry. Once you break from hundreds-of-years- old patterns of chord changes, homophony, and time signatures, it seems to me that you have an infinitely larger number of distinctive- sounding songs available to you. Most indie bands probably didn't go too far with this asymmetry thing, but their songs still sound more different from each other to me than Death Cab ever could from Seam, for instance. (And no, this isn't a pro-prog argument in disguise.)

I think it's sort of strange that in conversations where music is somehow organized into symmetrical vs. asymmetrical, playing it "straight" vs. playing off-kilter, etc. (yeah, I started it), a lot of people tend to think the "symmetrical" world and the "asymmetrical" world are the same, you know, size. What strikes us as "normal" or "symmetrical" is just the result of years of prejudice; the normal or symmetrical only makes up a tiny, tiny dot in the whole musical universe. I think the asymmetrical area is almost infinitely larger. Perhaps we are impaired in our abilities to hear differences between asymmetries, though, and perhaps, again, a lot of "indie" bands are also impaired in their abilities to play them. But I think it's wrong to lump all music-- even all indie-rock-- that breaks from 4/4 or I-IV-V into the same that's-a-cliche lump (which, I think, is what you sort of did). "whereas Death Cab essentially drew on dreampop, or at least its feel."

For clarification, what do you mean by "its feel"? I just asked Clarke-- who hasn't seen this yet-- to name some dreampop bands and he said, "Slowdive, Pale Saints..." If your ideas about what dreampop is are different from ours that's cool, but I feel like the way I would approach listening to those bands (who strike me as very expansive, noisy, and, you know, dreamy) is very different from the way I would approach Death Cab, who seem to write pop songs without any psychedelia.

"What bothers me about your post is that you seem to think of the former as doing something and the latter as doing nothing, as if music turns toward prettiness via some sort of unattended entropy."

No, I have no doubt that Death Cab's prettiness is intentional, if that's what you mean. I think prettiness is a pretty common characteristic, and while it's a fine one to have, I'd rather also listen to something that knows how to put the prettiness in its own words.

Happy to discuss this further with you, Nitsuh; I have learned a lot from reading your previous posts. But I don't think I've contradicted myself, and your post seems to infer that I did through assumptions about things I did not say rather than things I did say. Sorry I didn't make myself clearer.

Charlie, how dare you drag me into your quagmire of contradictions and logical entanglements! ;-)

Oh yeah, Clarke proofread my response when it was done, too. He said it made sense. :-)

charlie va, that's an interesting post. But for me, it comes down to one thing -- I like Death Cab's songs. The songs sound good to my ears. I enjoy the haphazard lyrics. Is it wholly originally, no? But what music is? And to whomever said they can't listen to Dntel because of the Death Cab track... that's one of my favorite songs of last year; it's what sold me on Death Cab to begin with... I wasn't all that impressed with 'We Have the Facts...' It seems to me, and I'm not naming names, that many of you have some issues with the dreamy cuteness of Death Cab and Bright Eyes... I, for one, don't even know what either frontman looks like, but I'm not threatened by or jealous of bands that get all the girls/boys. I'm not familiar with the music of Bright Eyes, so I'm in no way validating their/his music.

Yeah, I'm hoping that by spreading this idea that Death Cab for Cutie are rather dull I can help my chances with all the women of the world versus that dreamy fucker. Bright Eyes, I'll just hunt him down and kick him.

Sorry, Charlie -- I didn't mean to imply there was some logical proof of your wrongness lurking in there, or anything. The Seam reference is a good one, insofar as what I was trying to get at was how Built to Spill or Death Cab can be seen as pretty much equally slight variations on the "Golden Age" indierock template -- and while you're completely right about the "size" of, well, newness being larger than the size of convention, I don't think of either band as particularly crossing over the line. What I may have been sort of knee-jerk blaming you for was that general tendency to accept conventions so long as they "rock" but to label them "bland" when they're used in the service of the pretty.

I noted "at least the feel" of dreampop because I think Death Cab get at it -- and yes, in some senses even comparable with more shoegazery dreampop like the bands you mention -- except I think they get at it through sounds that would actually be classified as more "post-rock," or at least marginally so: all of this is just a complicated way of saying that they do, on We Have the Facts... some of the same types of warm-hum things that bands like the American Analog Set do. (I might also have better tagged this as "slowcore," but I hate that tag and anyway don't think it's quite what I mean.)

But all of that is sort of irrelevant, for me anyway, because The Thing about Death Cab is that no matter how you feel about what they've chosen to do, they -- and I'm going to have to just assert this, sans proof -- do it really, really well: they know their way not only around the melodies of the thing but around the dynamics in ways that consistently amaze me. I don't think I'll ever feel a need to buy any more of their records, but still -- whatever one's stance on swoony indie-rockers, I feel like there's empirical quantitative proof somewhere that those guys do them better than anyone could possibly ask for at this late point.

I think my question still sort of stands, though: why doesn't their prettiness, their actually sort of unusual devotion to the swoony dynamic popcraft of indie rock, count as a distinctive trait? The difference I'd posit between them and the early-90s types is that the indie of those days still followed a more punk-based script, such that the similar moments of Seam or New Radiant Storm King or whomever were more bashed out and bouncy, more verse-chorus-verse, and instrumentally simpler ... Death Cab are practically prog compared to a lot of those guys, insofar as they've picked up on the late-90s introduction of very careful arrangement and complex dynamic structures and such to the indie vocabulary.

Actually, I think some discussion of Bedhead might also be appropriate here: I tend to think of Death Cab as a popcraft version of Bedhead (as a rock band).

Phrased wrong: I am meaning Bedhead are a rock band and Death Cab are a popcraft version thereof.

Popcraft -- the latest product from Conhugeco. Take your obscure indie band, dip it in Popcraft and make it *sparkle*!

"I don't think of either band as particularly crossing over the line."

Nahh, I don't think so either, but I guess I was kind of thinking of Built to Spill circa "There's Nothing Wrong with Love", which is the only Built to Spill I ever cared about. Since then there's been a big normalizing effect: on their recent records I hear faceless double- tracked vocals and just-filling-space lyrics and metronomic drums, and I didn't hear those things before. And I heard "Nothing" for the first time in '94 or so when I was 14 or 15, so that record probably still sounds wilder and more creative to me than it would if I heard it for the first time now. You're probably right; they're probably not that different.

"What I may have been sort of knee-jerk blaming you for was that general tendency to accept conventions so long as they 'rock' but to label them 'bland' when they're used in the service of the pretty."

I can see why you would do that, but that's not even close to how I feel. I don't have problems with prettiness. Four or five years ago I was extremely into indie rock; now I'm not anymore, but I'm still surrounded by it through my radio station. So that's probably why I seem to know something about it without ever naming bands that I like. When I was into indie rock I probably leaned more toward the pretty, slow-core side, actually. "I think my question still sort of stands, though: why doesn't their prettiness, their actually sort of unusual devotion to the swoony dynamic popcraft of indie rock, count as a distinctive trait?"

Maybe you're right. I guess I was sort of thinking that if the sound itself (without considering the hooks... maybe it isn't fair to separate them, but I'm going to anyway) isn't that unique (attention to dynamics and other details aside), and the vocalist isn't bringing much to the table in the way of personality, then why not listen to Top 40 radio, where you can get your hooks AND hear personality in spades? But maybe you're right, since Death Cab doesn't really sound like anything on the radio (they don't particularly fill a void for me, but I can understand why they might for someone else). I'm struggling to think of a band that fills the indie-pop bill better than they do right now. I guess I just thought indie-pop has been sort of bankrupt for a while, but that's always a dangerous thing to think. Magnetic Fields? Do they count? The Loud Family, although their last album sucked and they've always been almost sort of sloppy... Neutral Milk Hotel?

Re: Bedhead: It's funny that you'd bring them up because that was a band I LOVED back in the day. The difference to me seems to be that Bedhead's music has an air of mystery about it... their songs always seemed inches from being great pop songs, as if they pulled themselves back a little from having full-fledged hooks, and the vocals had this sort of disconnected, half-asleep feel. Bedhead always seemed almost perfect to be, but I felt they never quite got there, which I liked. Conversely, when I hear Death Cab, their intentions feel totally obvious. I probably just feel that way because of the three-year difference between the first time I heard Bedhead and the first time I heard DCFC, though.

"to be almost perfect". Geez. And I swear I'm putting paragraph breaks in there.