Death Cab
It’s unlikely anyone would call Kintsugi, Death Cab for Cutie’s eighth studio album, the band’s catchiest. But even in the midst of Death Cab’s multiple breaks, the album very well might be the band’s most unified.
With Kintsugi, Death Cab strips its sound down for a back-to-basics breakup album. Melodramatic without falling into cliches, Kintsugi bares the band’s struggles and breaks, searching for growth and learning to move on without ever getting preachy.
The name of the album is taken from the Japanese art of kintsugi, which means “golden joinery.” Kintsugi involves mending shattered ceramic vessels by rejoining the pieces together with gold resin. The vessel is not only made whole again, but it is actually beautified in the process. It’s this metaphor that frames the rest of the album: Embracing breaks and setting them center stage to make a final product greater than the sum of its parts.
With the departure of former guitarist and producer Chris Walla, Death Cab embodies kintsugi’s metaphor for moving on. Walla, a founding member of the 18-year-old band, announced he was leaving the group about the time it was finishing up recording.
What’s more, the album is the band’s first since lead singer Ben Gibbard’s divorce from New Girl actress Zooey Deschanel. Kintsugi’s first track, “No Room In Frame,” is a direct call to his marriage’s dissolution: “Was I in your way when the cameras turned to face you? / No room in frame for two.”
From there, Gibbard’s breakup and Walla’s departure haunt the rest of the album. “The Ghosts Of Beverly Drive” and “You’ve Haunted Me All My Life” share glimpses into the anguish of lost opportunities and Gibbard’s troubled past. And yet, though melancholy, the sentiment expressed is not one of helpless victimization. In “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive,” Gibbard sings, “Oh I need not be flattered that you’ve never been here before / So there’s no need to mention that you’ve no firsts anymore.”
The album also marks something of a break away from the sound of the group’s 2011 release Codes and Keys, an album that departed from the band’s typically guitar-centered style by placing the emphasis on pianos and vocal samples. In recording Kintsugi, Death Cab faced questions of which direction to take the music.
As if in response, Death Cab has crafted an album that runs back through its history to the group’s earliest music. The songs on Kintsugi are certainly more guitar-centered, but on tracks such as “Ingenue” and “Binary Sea,” it’s also clear that Death Cab is comfortable with retooling its sound.
And from that comes Kintsugi’s use of travel as a motif for growth, or at least moving on. Reflecting its own development as a band, Death Cab shows the importance of place as a sense of security you can return to or venture out from. Gibbard has called “No Room In Frame,” which bares his failed marriage, a “kind of traveling song.” Despite his breakup — or perhaps, because of his breakup — he’s the one traveling and growing. Other songs, including “Little Wanderer” and “El Dorado,” also equate place with belonging and a yearning for connection.
Despite being eight albums into an extremely successful musical career, the members of Death Cab show that they’re not done growing. With Kintsugi, the band publicly embraces the shattered pieces of its past to rebuild and move forward with a sound and message more complete and secure than ever before.
