Will Ben Gibbard ever be happy? All signs point to no.
On Narrow Stairs, Gibbard and the rest of Death Cab for Cutie take a step further toward the melancholy, with 11 tracks heavy on the extended jams, morose lyrics and overall depressed side of things. Though the album is a natural progression from Death Cab’s previous works, Plans (2005) and Transatlanticism (2003), it also offers nothing new from the band. All of Death Cab’s expected elements are here, and together, they make the same product as always. We get it, Ben – you’re sad. Who knew?
On nearly all of the band’s albums, Death Cab has succeeded in mixing critical, gloomy lyrics about people’s lives (usually Gibbard’s own) in the middle of falling apart with dense, layered instrumentals. Transatlanticism was a tell-all into a particularly bad breakup (“this is the sound of settling,” “I become what I always hated/ When I was with you then” and “But I know it’s too late/ I should have given you a reason to stay”), and Plans was more of the same, with a focus on lushly described narratives (see: “Summer Skin” and “Marching Bands of Manhattan”).
With those two albums – and a stint on The O.C. – Gibbard set a precedent: Death Cab would be a thinking band for all the crying white kids out there. But with Narrow Stairs, the band stays in its comfort zone. There’s nothing new or exciting here, nothing as slow-burn dramatic as “Transatlanticism” or “What Sarah Said,” nothing as faux-upbeat as “Soul Meets Body.” The album is simply a regurgitation, from the subject matter to the instrumentation to overall tone.
Pining lyrics about lost loves? Check. Long, meandering instrumentation? Double check. A desperate, dreary look at the world? Triple, quadruple, infinite check.
Take the album’s first single, “I Will Possess Your Heart.” The song clocks in at 8:35 on the album, but it is cut to 4:11 for radio/MTV play. Though the album version of the song starts promisingly with an engaging, melodic opening jam that lasts nearly four minutes, the radio edit cuts out all that enjoyable instrumentation and jumps right into Gibbard’s nasal vocals instead. The intense lyrics seem honest, but that doesn’t take away their creepy factor: “You reject my advances and desperate pleas/ I won’t let you let me down so easily.”
Similarly annoying is “You Can Do Better Than Me.” Gibbard’s self-deprecation knows no bounds as he sings, “But it’s times I think of leaving/ But it’s something I’ll never do/ ‘Cause you can do better than me/ But I can’t do better than you.” Though the instrumentation is somewhat Beatles-like, Gibbard’s repetitive lyrical matter just ruins it.
And it doesn’t help that most tracks on Narrow Stairs sound like songs Death Cab has already recorded. “Your New Twin Sized Bed” is far too similar to Plans’ “Brothers on a Hotel Bed,” and “Talking Bird” is like a rehash of Plans’ “Stable Song.”
That’s not to say other bands haven’t made careers from doing the same thing over and over again on each album. The Foo Fighters have stuck to a middle-of-the-road, generic rock shtick for years now, and they’ve been successful each time. Similarly, Rage Against the Machine unleashed a fantastic debut album (The Onion’s A.V. Club recently named it one of the best debuts of all time) and then relied on that militant, headbanging dynamic until they broke up in 2000. And even worse bands, such as Nickelback and Creed, made their millions off conning tons of stupid fans into liking their crappy songs, all of which have the Exact. Same. Guitar riff.
So Death Cab must find itself in a questionable quagmire, stuck between an established sound and an adoring fanbase and the opportunity to branch out and do new things. Thankfully, on some tracks, they do. Album opener “Bixby Canyon Bridge” is beautiful in its simplicity, and when it switches gears toward a heavier sound in the middle of the track, it (surprisingly) works, accenting lyrics such as “And I trudged back to where the car was parked/ No closer to any kind of truth/ As I must assume was the case with you.” And “Long Division,” though very similar to Transatlanticism’s “A Lack Of Color,” is ingenious in its use of a mathematical metaphor to explain a couple in the middle of falling apart.
But the album’s real star is “Pity and Fear,” which uses an African-esque drumbeat and reverberating bassline to accentuate Gibbard’s forlorn lyrics. As he sings, “If you can’t stand in place/ You can’t tell who is walking away,” the instrumentation speeds up, eventually careening into a chaotic mess that effectively demonstrates the song’s hopeless quality.
A few tracks, though, can’t save the lopsidedly repetitious feel of Narrow Stairs. If you’ve heard Transatlanticism and Plans, you’ve heard it all before – and there’s nothing new in Gibbard’s whining for anyone to be surprised by.
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Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5 Stars.
