Death Cab For Cutie
These dudes.
Very few bands “make it.” Far more toil in relative obscurity, only sometimes earning a fan base and a living wage for their art. Many of these little- or under-known acts, though, are the inspiration for or the compatriots of those bigger acts that make it. Thus, The A.V. Club’s Recommended If You Like, where we start with a bigger band—Mumford And Sons, for example—and run down a few acts that the bigger band’s fans might be into.
For this edition, we’re going deep into the world of Washington D.C.’s Death Cab For Cutie. The once-little-indie-band-that-could has transformed into an arena powerhouse, which is a style the band wears well on its shiny, new Codes And Keys. With the group set to play tomorrow night, Aug. 23 at Red Rocks, The A.V. Club decided to present a list of acts with a little Death Cab in them—or vice versa—that aren’t named “The Postal Service” for all of those DCFC fans interested in expanding their musical libraries.
Sunny Day Real Estate:
The Seattle foursome is best known as a cornerstone of the emo genre, having influenced every band that got hooked with that tag after 1994. But Sunny Day affected more than just kids in the aughts with bad haircuts, and helped pave the way for the kind of Northwestern American indie rock that Death Cab performs. When Sub Pop reissued SDRE’s first two albums in 2009, the label included Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard in an oral history for each CD’s expanded liner notes. And Gibbard had nothing but kind things to say about Sunny Day’s Diary: “I had never heard an album I’d felt was so custom-tailored to me.”
The Southern Sea:
This Texas indie-rock act wears its Death Cab influence right on its sleeve. The band plays that wistful, quasi-downcast indie pop with the same grace and speed that fans have come to expect from Death Cab. One listen to “Iowa Mountain Tour,” the leadoff track from The Southern Sea’s debut EP, will eerily remind listeners of DCFC: The bass-heavy, effervescent tune features vocals that sound like they were ripped out of Gibbard’s throat and instrumentals that could be a B-side to Something About Airplanes.
The Dismemberment Plan:
On the surface, Death Cab and Washington, D.C.’s The Dismemberment Plan are on different musical planets. The D-Plan’s sound borrows from a diverse pool of musical styles that would never feel at home in a Death Cab song, like, well, hip-hop. Yet, there’s a bond between these two bands that can be traced back to their 2002 co-headlining tour, aptly titled the “Death And Dismemberment Tour.” At their best, both acts are able to hit just the right notes to pull at every heartstring in a crowd—even if Death Cab and The Plan play the notes differently. Since the D-Plan broke up (and got back together), Death Cab’s material has gotten progressively more experimental, perhaps a sign that the foursome learned a thing or two from D.C.’s finest.
Popol Vuh:
Speaking of experimental, things got a little strange with Death Cab For Cutie’s 2008 album, Narrow Stairs. That’s when the group managed to put out a single that stretched out past the eight-minute mark—on the album version, at least—and featured some heady, hypnotic bass work. The album’s krautrock vibe is more than noticeable, and a large portion of that aesthetic comes straight from a German electronic, art-rock act called Popul Vuh. Gibbard got into the group’s music while working on Narrow Stairs, and in April 2007 wrote a blog post about it on Death Cab’s site that says, “since my friend Zach first played me the music of Popul Vuh I’ve been kinda obsessed with it.”
Into It. Over It.:
Singer-songwriter Evan Thomas Weiss, from Chicago by way of Philadelphia and New Jersey, has released some sharp and sweet emo tunes with his solo project, Into It. Over It. A lot of his material has a hard-nosed pop-punk edge that rages hard, but any Death Cab fan could cozy up to the warm, quieter tunes Weiss has created. With a voice that’s sometimes reminiscent of Gibbard’s—something critics have been eager to point out—Weiss can put on one moving, intimate performance with just an acoustic guitar.
Heatmiser:
Before Elliott Smith became “beloved singer-songwriter Elliott Smith,” he co-fronted a post-hardcore band called Heatmiser. The group married the kind of rugged folk-pop of Smith’s solo career with the kind of aggressive indie rock that filled Dischord’s catalog in the ’90s. Heatmiser’s influence on Death Cab can be heard in the rougher edges of the band’s tunes: In a funny twist of fate, Heatmiser drummer Tony Lash helped smooth out DCFC’s rougher edges when he mastered Something About Airplanes.
