Death Cab For Cutie – Narrow Stairs

Like many people, my first real introduction to Death Cab For Cutie was with their 2005 breakout album Plans. Having received the necessary push from shows like the O.C., the band had become a household name and Plans took over the airwaves. Ben Gibbard’s vocals crooned loved torn lyrics over a perfect indie rock melody and no one could deny the passion within his soulful lyrics of love, ambition and more love. Three years later they are back with their highly anticipated follow-up, Narrow Stairs – an album, which to me anyway, seems all too void of that passion which helped Plans climb the charts.

Lyrically, Gibbard hasn’t lost anything. In fact, the lyrics on Narrow Stairs seem to be all that much more powerful and distinct. Still tackling topics of love and ambition, Gibbard paints a much more sorrowful picture unlike anything he’s done before. In Cath, he tells a story of a heartbroken woman who acts like everything’s fine for the benefit of others, saying softly “As the flashbulbs burst, she holds a smile, like someone would hold a crying child.” You Can Do Better Than Me sees someone staying in a broken relationship for “fear of dying alone.” No Sunlight has someone losing his sense of optimism and The Ice Is Getting Thinner is a heart wrenching song of dwindling relationships.

The lyrics are not the problem here, the problem is the delivery of those lyrics and the music that surrounds them.Not content to sit back and write a song that everyone expects to hear from them, Death Cab For Cutie have experimented a bit on the record. Unfortunately that experimentation rarely helps push the songs forward but instead hinders them from fulfilling their full potential.

Take the opening two tracks for example. Bixby Canyon Bridge opens up the record nicely, it immediately pulls you in with a sparse soundtrack and Gibbard softly singing overtop. The song builds on itself adding in extra layers before the drum beat breaks in and Gibbard’s voice drops in the mix with some digitalized effects. At that point it still works what doesn’t work is the two minute explosion of chaotic noise repeated over and over again at the end of the track. It drags the song on for way too long and you soon lose interest. The following track, and lead single, doesn’t help move you either. The eight and a half minute opus, I Will Possess Your Heart, doesn’t restrict itself to the contours of a regular pop song but instead has an omnious five minute introduction; the thing is that the stalker song doesn’t need that introduction and once it finally does reach the meat of the song you realize that the introduction didn’t actually add anything to the it.

A lot of the songs on Narrow Stairs fall victim to that type of experimentation with odd additions and disjointed endings; like Pity and Fear which ends so abruptly it completely disrupts the flow of the album. The only positive part of the abrupt halt is that the following cut, The Ice Is Getting Thinner is by far the best song on the album.

It is when Gibbard and company restrict themselves to what they know best that the album starts to succeed. Songs like Grapevine, You Can Do Better Than Me and the aforementioned The Ice Is Getting Thinner all see the passion and emotion that filled Plans while many of the other songs just aren’t memorable enough to warrant multiple listens. Simply put, they fall into the background and leaveNarrow Stairs missing some much needed emotion.