Death Cab for Cutie, Codes and Keys
By Chris Polley
When Ben Gibbard, lead singer and rhythm guitarist for Washington’s premier glossy wuss-rock act Death Cab for Cutie, married She & Him singer and big time movie star Zooey Deschanel last year, my mind immediately fast-forwarded to a number of different possible future albums he and his band of love and heartbreak obsessed sadsacks will release. Having penned such cinematic metaphor staples such as “A Movie Script Ending” and “Clark Gable” (with Dntel as The Postal Service), what would happen when he finally got his sunset-soaked, string-swelling denouement? Even worse/better (depending on your perspective), what if it resulted a few years later in the most tragic and epic lost love finale ever committed to tape?
Well, with Codes and Keys, we officially got the former, so now I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak. Call it Schadenfreude, if you must, but it’s less a desired inevitability than it is a pattern that happens to repeat itself in this subgenre of alternative rock music. Gibbard is a songwriter so obsessed with youth and beauty, even as he’s able to make reference to that unhealthy relationship with the past, that so much of this discovery of internal peace and romantic matrimony can’t help but feel temporary. And when it fulfills this final step, it could very well be the career-defining and/or career-ending swan song that Gibbard has himself set into motion ever since the beginning notes of “Amputations” on his and producer/lead guitarist Chris Walla’s very first cassette using the DCfC moniker. You know, the circle of life, blah blah blah.
But for right now, we get Codes and Keys, a not quite as obvious pair of ambiguous titular symbols to represent the former step in this process. Here, Gibbard focuses on the accessing of love, happiness, and comfort, otherwise portrayed here by tropes such as nature, dancing, and (such as the video/song above suggests) home. In other words, it’s nothing surprising. It’d be like Aaron Sorkin marrying some beautiful celebrity and then churning out a romantic comedy screenplay. The movie would be problematic considering how attached it is to his direct personal life, which would laid bare for all to see via the pop culture ether, but you couldn’t help but admire Sorkin doing what he’s always been good at, even if it feels a little too informed by his life rather than a genuine universal outlook on a topic that all could relate to.
The rub with this analogy, however, is that Gibbard (like so many modern lyricists) has always let his personal life directly inspire his wordsmithery as if it wasn’t a choice. This very kind of heart-on-the-sleeve approach is exactly what made sensitive adolescents such as myself in the early 00s grab ahold of We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes and never let go, even when the band signed to a major label and started spitting out one warm redundant ditty after the next. I thrived off this kind of straightforward emotion coming through in cherubic vocals and lilting guitar licks for many years because it was transposed into such obliquely literary yarns that it felt simultaneously more elegant and more intense.
“Monday Morning”
What it didn’t do though was progress in a socially acceptable way. The pragmatist may start out thinking such a wide-eyed and idealist view of the world and coupledom is completely normal, but eventually it gets more realist, subdued, and even-handed. Sometimes this will lead to a musical artists sputtering out overly mature and blank-slated work until they give up and become a carpenter or something else equally practical besides creating music. On the flipside, it could lead a musician to become more interested in tone and texture, finding ways to ever-so-slightly experiment with style and atmosphere that will differentiate them from their past and gain them varying levels of respect for branching out or trying something new. These are grotesque generalizations, to be sure, but Death Cab have somehow managed to attempt wading down both of these paths without fully succeeding in either.
And yet, unlike brethren such as Jimmy Eat World, Modest Mouse, or Cursive, Gibbard and co. have the unique challenge set in front of them of still being labeled “alternative” while arguably being one of the least outwardly experimental “alternative rock” bands in existence. Jimmy Eat World gave up on being “alternative” long ago, now continually milking their past achievements every time a new record full of neutered power-pop bombs. Modest Mouse still yelps and chugs through their singles, despite how glossy they successively become, but it’s mostly stunt casting that keeps them firmly under the “alternative” umbrella, with affiliations ranging from Johnny Marr to Big Boi. And Cursive, well, Tim Kasher proved long ago that once you hit bottom and make two brilliant records about your divorce, the only place to go is apparently safe yet dusty folk-tinged rock music that all but a handful of the devoted ignore.
“Underneath the Sycamore”
Much of the soundscape tinkering that keeps Death Cab afloat and away from the genre-changing or complete dissemination of respectability is due to the genius of Chris Walla, who even as he can’t kick his habit of making everything sterile and clinical, does succeed in constructing walled backgrounds awash in detail and intricacy. It is because of his work as the band’s producer (as well as member) that the songs aren’t completely led by Gibbard’s precious balladry and, frankly, makes the whole record listenable. Sure, there’s nothing gutsy or revolutionary happening, but the nice thing about Death Cab is that even as they attempt to do the same thing over and over again, just with more skittering synth drums, or with less teen angst, it never comes off as tired or exhausted. It may make its listener sleepy or ambivalent, but there’s clearly care and honesty put into it.
Unfortunately the same tingle I got as a 15-year-old hearing “Title Track” for the first time, when the right and left channel converge at a crucial moment into a cacophony of clean guitars and simple yet obtuse poetry, isn’t going to happen again. Gibbard’s stuck talking about what’s right in front of him, and while that’s all I ever wanted as a high schooler, and while I can still admire the commitment which still inspires sporadic moments of calm wonder, I have to admit that I have moved on. I could listen to it on a loop for hours and I wouldn’t necessarily get bored, but I would never soak in every tic and hiccup like I once did. It’s okay though; they’re comfortable, I’m comfortable, and we just need to smile at each other now when we see each other, not jump at each other voraciously for epic hugs.