Death Cab For Cutie: Narrow Stairs

How does that Costello quote go? “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. You know, Elvis, you might have something there. It passes the test of a good aphorism; it rings true if you don’t think about it too much. Dancing about architecture? That sure sounds stupid! But, like almost all aphorisms, it falls apart if you spend some time thinking about it. With that little piece of pith Costello is trying to say that the experience of music is too far removed from the experience of literature, as the experience of dancing is too far removed from the experience of architecture. I don’t think that this is so. These are all aesthetic experiences, and there is no distinct line between aesthetic experiences. Or, closer, one type of aesthetic experience can heighten or add greater understanding to other ones (fuckall Wagner). Basically, what I’m saying is, get your best shoes and nattiest threads on homes, ‘cause vamos a bailar the tango Frank Lloyd Wright.

Death Cab for Cutie has always seemed too sad to pull off being as good as it is; too good to pull of being as sad as it is. The band’s songs seem to live in the same gloomy ramshackle neighborhood as those of the Smiths and the Cure, yet they do not seem like they fit there entirely. This might be due to the personas of the bands themselves. The Cure and the Smiths are both messedupinthehead bands from England, where (we all know) it is always overcast and glum. Death Cab for Cutie isn’t from that murky isle, so how come they’re so sad?

Fuck knows, but it works. The band’s new album, Narrow Stairs, touches some raw nerve, and touches some exposed bone, and touches sonic brilliance. The album is like a road-trip to the beach. Let’s go to the beach.

Bixby Canyon Bridge, the first tune, is (it must be mentioned) a throwaway song. No matter, here we are at the beach. Imagine standing at the edge of the ocean. The sand is wet and hard under our bare feet. The mid-afternoon sun is slipping out from behind the clouds and there’s a salty smell on the breeze. Without even touching it, we know that the water is cold. Still, this is a beach road-trip, and certain things must be done when at the beach, and one of them is to walk into the waves, even if just a little. This first song is like dipping our toes into that cold water, and is like feeling the surf curl over and between our crinkled toes. It’s bracing and electrifying.

I Will Possess Your Heart, a promise and the second song, builds from a long ways off. Look out to sea. What do you see out there, just along the horizon? Not much, just a wavering line of waves. Can you see that one wave there? The one coming in fast, much too fast for a normal wave? Not really; we don’t notice it until it has come up to the shore, until it has come up over our toes and over our legs and over our hips, Jesus, what just happened, and we’ve been knocked over and into the water entirely. We can still see the world above the water, sometimes, the foam and the scud flies around our heads like crazy clouds caught in some massive wind. We can still see the world as it was before the album started playing, before this truly awesome song started, but in fragments. Funny, we should be worried, I mean, here we are, completely submerged in a sneaker wave, but everything seems alright. It is nice to get wet, and it is nice to be pulled along by a wave every once in a while.

No Sunlight, pulls off the old DCFC trick, cheery fast music, sad lyrics. On the beach, we’re lying on our backs, completely disoriented by that sneaker wave, and for some reason now we’re being drawn away from the beach, being drawn away from the parking lot where our car is parked, and being drawn out to that wavering horizon.

Cath… Oop, there’s the undertow, hope you got a big gulp of air, cause you’re going down under the waves. It’s a strong undertow, it’s really pulling us all down to the bottom. No, this is no normal pull, there’s something weird about this. Too insistent. If we fought against it, we’d wear ourselves out, so, we’re just going along with it. By now, we should be worried, how long have we been under water? But it all seems to be OK, and it seems that breathing isn’t all that great to begin with, and it most strange of all, it seems as if we don’t even need to breathe anymore.

Talking Bird. Gills? We have gills now?

You Can Do Better Than Me. Yes, we have gills. How strange is that? This is something serious! Death Cab for Cutie does that sometimes, and does it very well on this album; it pulls you under into its submarine soundscape and it gives you gills, and says, play here for a while.

Grapevine Fires. The finest song on the album, one of the finest songs the band has ever made, both apocalyptic and microscopic in scope. The chorus sways like seaweed on the bottom of the seabed, where we are now, looking at all the little crabs running around. There’s a sense of longing down here at the bottom of the ocean, an easy-drifting sense of loss. Remember what it was like up above the water? Remember what it was like before this album started? It was nice up there. Want to go back? Yes—but not yet. It’s too beautiful down here to leave so soon.

Your New Twin Sized Bed. Ah. This is classic DCFC. Sad? Yup. Telling details? Yup. Soft vocals, twinkling guitar? Yip yip yup! It’s surprisingly warm down here, under the waves. You’d think that it would be cold, that we’d be cold, but it’s not so bad. And look at all those fishes! Look how their scales catch the watery light!

Long Division. Here comes another drag, another pull, it’s pulling us in a new direction. We’re still under water, but we know that we’re leaving the aquatic kingdom.

Pity and Fear. Another long pull around our ankles, this one drawing us up to that wavering light, and as we rise, pop!, there go our gills, falling off and slipping away into the deeps behind us, and now we’re on the beach again, how’d that happen? a little stunned, a little startled, with water coming off our shirts and out of our ears.

The Ice is Getting Thinner. We stand up, and look back out at that horizon of waves, and out at the sunlight playing on the water, and turn back, to our car. We’ve got to head back home, even though we don’t want to. Every adventure and every album has to end sometime. I’m just glad that I got to take this one.