Before Death Cab for Cutie started stalking some poor blonde chick on their latest album, Narrow Stairs, before they left indie mainstay Barsuk and signed to Atlantic, (earning a Grammy nomination for Plans), and before Narrow Stairs became the 11-year-old band’s first-ever #1 album, Death Cab was writing lush, image-soaked songs about eating Thanksgiving dinner off Styrofoam plates in a church hall, broken homes, the fetid funk of L.A., and heartbreak magnified past the point of general psychological discomfort (see: every song that isn’t about the first three points). Real melancholy and the infinite sadness type stuff — the music of unnamed emotional mile markers heightened by the painful earnestness of Ben Gibbard’s meadowlark-as-man tenor.
Death Cab is the poet laureate of the post-Nirvana, post-Napster generation. More than a band, we think of them more like an anti-heroic amalgam of high school valedictorian, the biggest music geek you’ll ever know, the guy who skipped prom to watch Werner Herzog films that night, and the hyper-literate boy who didn’t get picked first in gym, as you’ll see in their Artist of the Week spots.
Death Cab is successful almost to a fault. But are they caught up in rock star posturing? Not even slightly. Seven albums and myriad solo albums, EPs, films, and side projects (Chris Walla’s pretty much the Timbaland of the indie world, and you have heard of the Postal Service, right?), and they’re still the same unpretentious guys in thrift store flannel — four of least assuming, most down-to-earth (not to mention, palest) guys in the music business today. And now, if you’ll excuse them, they’ve got some WhirlyBall to lose.
+ Check out a few of Death Cab for Cutie’s Artist of the Week videos below, and watch them all, plus acoustic performances, right here. After the jump, check out photos of Death Cab for Cutie on the set of their Artist of the Week video shoot in Washington State, watch both versions of their “I Will Possess Your Heart” video, plus more Death Cab videos and live performances, check out their exclusive Buzzworthy tour blogs, get more on Narrow Stairs, and see a whole new side — a Whirly-er side of Death Cab for Cutie.
