Death Cab For Cutie on Soundstage
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Since debuting with Something About Airplanes a decade ago, Seattle band Death Cab For Cutie has written some of the most devastating songs in indie rock. Lurking like landmines among its six full-lengths and numerous EPs are a dozen or more songs pointedly addressing life's most inspirational catastrophes—relationships, death, childhood—with gut-wrenching honesty. Put it this way: Frontman Ben Gibbard is the kind of man who would attend the wedding of the woman he thought he'd marry, then write a two-part song about it ("Company Calls" and "Company Calls Epilogue," from 2000's We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes).
That Ben Gibbard wasn't onstage Thursday night at WTTW's cavernous studios, where Death Cab taped an upcoming episode of Soundstage in front of a rapturous audience. Looking fitter and happier than ever—being engaged to Zooey Deschanel probably has its benefits—Gibbard and the rest of Death Cab tore through a set anchored by songs from last year's excellent Narrow Stairs.
Still, Death Cab paid tribute to its early days by opening with "The Employment Pages," a subdued, atmospheric deep cut from the generally subdued and atmospheric We Have The Facts. It's hardly a party-starting jam to get the crowd rocking, which the Soundstage staff obviously wanted—"Look like you're having a good time!" they implored the audience before the cameras started rolling. But no devil's horns could be raised to Gibbard quietly singing "And it was true that I was truly failing / you were gone and I was home calling around / but nothing was found worthwhile."
Acting livelier became easier when the band moved into "Your Heart Is An Empty Room" from 2005's Plans, the group's breakthrough album. The audience came alive and clapped along to the beat, and in the control room, Soundstage's producers probably breathed a sigh of relief that Death Cab's episode wouldn't show a bunch of people standing around, heads bobbing occasionally. They bobbed consistently as the set grew more spirited, particularly during a final stretch that included "Long Division" and "The Sound Of Settling."
It also featured "Cath…," a song from Narrow Stairs that sounds like a castaway from the We Have The Facts sessions. The titular Cath has settled for a seemingly doomed marriage—"The whispers that it won't last rolled up and down the pews"—to a "well-intentioned man": "Soon everybody will ask / what became of you. / Your heart was dying so fast / and you didn't know what to do."
Fame, fortune, and Hollywood starlets aside, it's still the same Gibbard and the same Death Cab. Here's hoping that never changes.
Death Cab For Cutie's episode of Soundstage airs July 9 at 9 p.m. on WTTW, Ch. 11.
