Back to the Future: Narrow Stairs

A few months ago, I was called gay for wearing a Death Cab for Cutie shirt in public, a moment as shocking as it is telling. Thanks to Plans, a record I actually like and obviously their biggest-selling best-known album, and the OC, the average American thinks Death Cab are a bunch of pussies. At the same time, the indie elitists who loved their early work cajole them for "selling out" with a major label and a shiny, hooky album like Plans. Therein lies the rub. The last 3 years has been a building battle of expectations. New fans wanting another Plans, old ones wanting a return to The Photo Album, and the people who don't give a damn making fun of the people who do. Needless to say, Narrow Stairs is going to leave at least one of those groups disappointed.

And, not to get all age-ist on you, but that group will probably be the bright-eyed and fickle high school crowd who pushed Plans above over a million copies sold. Armed with an 8-minute-plus single, Ben Gibbard & Co. are serving notice that this record will be an immediate departure from their sugar-coated ways of recent past. And by committing this record to analog tape, they limited the amount of things that could be done to it in post-production, thus forcing them to get the sounds they wanted in the studio and put down a helluva take for each song. Which they did.

Narrow Stairs is not the Photo Album, though the beginning of "Long Division" does sound strikingly similar to "We Laugh Indoors". It's no Plans either, though the opening "Bixby Canyon Bridge" does feel like a rougher-edges take on "Marching Bands of Manhattan" but definitely spirals off the handle over the final two minutes. It's no Transatlanticism, though "Your New Twin Sized Bed" does remind me of a slightly slower "Title and Registration". None of these similarities take away from this record, it actually serves as glue. This is a band, making the music they want to make, and doing it their way. This is a band that has history with me, history with you, history with themselves. This is their way of addressing it. This is Back to the Future, Death Cab style.

Watch an amazing documentary on the making of Narrow Stairs on Current TV.

Listen:
Grapevine Fires
[from Narrow Stairs|buy]