The San Diego Freeway-a.k.a. the 405-is a drab, twisting expanse known for bottlenecks, exhaust, and massive frustration. It's the quickest route to Hollywood, but in many ways, it's the slowest. You could idle all day, stuck between the center of everything and nowhere at all. I was on the 405 one sunny day last January, listening to "405," a lilting song about the vagaries of distance-both physical and emotional-from Death Cab for Cutie's second album, 2000's We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes. And the song was on the radio, not my CD player.
"Indie 103" appeared on Los Angeles radio a few months ago, a corporate experiment in counter-counterprogramming. Suddenly, it's possible to hear a four-year-old song from an indie-rock band high up on the FM dial. But just as Indie 103 is an unlikely radio phenomenon, Death Cab for Cutie are the unlikeliest of radio stars: a quartet of exceedingly polite Seattleites whose striking ascendance has led them to L.A. for a video shoot, their first national TV appearance (on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn) and a major-label bidding frenzy.
Bands like Death Cab were supposed to have fallen from big-biz favor a few years ago (about the time Modest Mouse cashed their first Epic advance check). And it's a shock to many, including the members of Death Cab, that their fourth and best album, Transatlanticism, has sold more than 100,000 copies since its release late last year. So, in the rich tradition of numerous little bands who've made their way down the coast to awkwardly fill a slot on late-night TV, Death Cab find themselves on the Kilborn set at CBS's Television City, where they fit in about as well as their music does on FM radio.
Death Cab look and act like first-years killing time before Am Civ class. Bassist Nick Harmer and recently acquired drummer Jason McGerr are eager to show everyone the giant Price Is Right wheel a floor below, while singer Ben Gibbard and guitarist Chris Walla seem particularly amused by the potential gastrointestinal side effects of a complimentary breath mint that promises "immediate rehydration."
A large group of expat Seattle friends has gathered in the green room, and the band members melt right into them. They wait until the last possible second to get slathered with makeup before giving a spotless performance of Transatlanticism's most outwardly rocking song, "The New Year." Gibbard sings, "So this is the new year / And I don't feel any different," warming up the crowd while Kilborn prepares to interview Stephen Baldwin.
"L.A. points out all of one's shortcomings," Gibbard says later. "I was at a party here, and I met Kirsten Dunst. My rational head is saying, 'This person isn't any better than anybody else I've ever met.' But then, you can't help but feel a little inferior."
Gibbard's modesty is genuine, but it does hint at Death Cab's shy mainstream courtship. With glistening hooks, openhearted sincerity, and lyrics that hone in on the tactile details of first blush and breakup, Death Cab have found a way to communicate intimate, insular indie rock to the budding teen-emo overground. They write weepy seven-minute piano ballads and do sincere acoustic covers of Avril Lavigne. They tour with Pedro the Lion but idolize U2's history of fame with integrity.
When the band started in 1997, they were compared to beardy guitar noodlers Built to Spill; on The Late Late Show, they were compared to Dashboard Confessional. They now tour in Europe, Australia, and Japan in a bus, not a van. Gibbard's brilliant electro collaboration with producer Jimmy Tamborello, singer Jen Wood, and Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis-the Postal Service-has sold a staggering 150,000 copies of its debut album, Give Up, since early 2003. Death Cab have even found the perfect mass-cult mirror image in The OC's nervous, fast-talking, nerd-chic character Seth Cohen, played by real-life fan Adam Brody (see below). Brody regularly name-checks the band on the show, and his unlikely rise to heartthrob status dovetails perfectly with Gibbard's.
The band have taken meetings with every big label, including a waffle breakfast at Interscope boss Jimmy Iovine's palatial pad and an Elektra sit-down where Gibbard chastised president Sylvia Rhone for her past treatment of peers Nada Surf, Spoon, and Superdrag. Gibbard is only as leery of the majors as he is determined to find the audience the band deserves.
"My friend Rjyan [Kidwell, a.k.a. indie rapper Cex] always says, 'Why would you want to make a record only 1,000 people liked?' I'd feel really lame to have never taken a risk," he says.
Death Cab for Cutie (their name references a '60s song by Monty Python associates the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band) formed when Gibbard, who was attending Western Washington University, bonded with Walla, a budding four-track producer, over a shared love for Teenage Fanclub. "Between '96 and '97, I wrote eight or nine songs that were suddenly really good," says Gibbard. "I'd had the first major heartbreak of my adult life-that always helps!"
Working part-time between other projects, Walla helped Gibbard transform those songs into a cassette-only release, You Can Play These Songs With Chords, that became a hit with local tastemakers. Gibbard quit his contracting job at an oil refinery (he had graduated with a degree in environmental chemistry), and in 1998, the band released their debut record, Something About Airplanes. But it was 2000's elegiac We Have the Facts that established Death Cab as the sweethearts of a scarred and scattered underground. "Ben never hits a wrong note-ever," says Jenny Lewis. "His work reminds me of Lost in Translation, pure and simple, immediately accessible and then resonant."
Death Cab toured relentlessly in 2001, releasing The Photo Album, a hastily produced, uneven third record that gained them tens of thousands of new fans and forced them to confront, for the first time, the tension between part-time "project" and life choice. All three core members-Gibbard, Walla, and Harmer-are whip-smart, driven, and mature, but in quite different ways. Gibbard is dedicated to songcraft and collaboration, Harmer is the steady, business-minded rock (crediting the band's success to "hard work and doing what we do"), and Walla is the single-minded audiophile perfectionist. "I don't think Chris realized until that tour [in 2001] that he was in a band," says Gibbard. "He thought he was just playing with us in between being a full-time recording engineer. Whereas, I was like, 'This is all I want to do.'" After a nearly apocalyptic fight in Baltimore while on tour, Death Cab almost called it quits. Every band has an obsessive, but Death Cab have two, often working on opposite sides of the soundboard. "They [Gibbard and Walla] have a way of tapping into a kind of collective consciousness," says Harmer. "I couldn't let them walk away from that."
The band scattered after the tour ended. In 2002, Gibbard hooked up with Silverlake scenesters Tamborello and Lewis and Seattleite Jen Wood, resulting in the Postal Service's songs with beats, Give Up. Meanwhile, Walla began producing in earnest at his home studio (the Hall of Justice), making records for the Thermals, Hot Hot Heat, and the Decemberists, among others.
"It was weird for a minute to see the Postal Service doing so well," Walla admits. "Partly because I just didn't really get it, because I know Ben's songwriting, and I could see all the parts I wouldn't let him get away with."
Gibbard, who won't do extensive promotion for the Postal Service, insists that his side project will not interfere with his real band. And in a sense, Transatlanticism marked the launch of Death Cab 2.0. The band brought in McGerr, an old friend, as well as a manager, freeing Harmer from handling band business. "They stopped and noticed that they needed to mature at a time when a lot of bands would have opted to just continue being juvenile," says Josh Rosenfeld, head of their label, Barsuk.
The afternoon after the Kilborn taping, the band take another big step in the L.A. indoctrination process-a video shoot for Transatlanticism's "The Sound of Settling," the first clip in which they've ever actually appeared. The guys goof around the set, playing wheelchair joust. They're too normal, too familiar to make this a rock-star-in-waiting training day. (It says something about a band when the drummer gives you the two bottles of rum in his Kilborn gift bag.) But then the music starts playing again over the P.A., and it's possible to see the American Coldplay that A&R gunners are drooling over. "Ben is that rare artist with a truly unique and singular voice," says DreamWorks/Interscope A&R man Luke Wood. "Ben's not Bert McCracken swinging from the rafters. He's not a rock star, but he draws you into his world."
On the best songs from Transatlanticism-the epic title track (with its refrain of "I need you so much closer") and the morning-after pill "A Lack of Color"-Gibbard rakes himself over the coals of a breakup, but with a far-reaching command of melody and nuance. This thematic hook has exploded Death Cab's fan base, pushing them into the hyper-charged world of 15-year-old girls who sing along and 15-year-old boys with blogs, and that makes Gibbard a little nervous.
"I want to write songs that come from a real place, with a real story, but not like"-he clears his throat and sings in a Steve Perry-esque croon, "Jenny! You fucking broke my heart! On Thursday...at the Red Lobster!"
He complains half-jokingly about intentionally messing up lyrics so audiences in Florida can't sing along, and the band have turned down numerous invitations to open for Dashboard Confessional. "I won't name any names, but if I were 27 and playing that kind of big-stroke, big-amp emo, I would find it to be an incredibly arrested statement."
Later that night, Gibbard and I are driving through Hollywood in search of a Burger King, so he can score a veggie burger. Indie 103 plays a Dashboard Confessional song, then fades right into "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service, and Gibbard pauses to consider the weirdness of hearing your private feelings broadcast to an entire city in one moment. "If 14- or 15-year-old kids are getting into our band-well, I think that's a very good thing," he says. "I'd rather take a chance and fall on our ass than play the safe card."
For Death Cab's newfound fans-people at the point where everything in life seems both possible and risky-Gibbard's vision of growing up, peppered with teenage sensations and regrets, is intoxicating. Many of his observations on Transatlanticism begin with "This is...." He's an expert at documenting the precise moment when things change or feel lost forever. And such a moment may have arrived for his band.
"During the holidays," Gibbard says, "my girlfriend and I had Nick and his girlfriend over to our house, and we played the Game of Life for the first time since we were kids. And the thing is, Life is hard!" He laughs. "There were all these choices that I don't remember being in the game when we were younger. I mean, Nick ended up living in a trailer." He laughs and looks out the window at the Sunset Strip. "Who knew things could end up that complicated?"
oc/dc
Inside the mind of Adam Brody-The OC's star and Death Cab obsessive
Spin: How much of Seth Cohen's musical taste is your own?
Adam Brody: It's a fusion of me and Josh Schwartz, the
writer/creator. He's only 27 and likes a lot of the same bands. My
favorites are Death Cab for Cutie and Bright Eyes. He's more into the
Shins and Interpol, so we kind of split it.
How long have you been into Death Cab? Since The Photo Album came out. Ben's lyrics are just so freaking great, so different and poetic. Once you get into people who write that way, it's hard to go back to the radio. It's ruined me!
Did you give Death Cab and Bright Eyes CDs to people as real-life Christmukkah gifts? I gave Josh Schwartz a Bright Eyes CD-that might have been the inspiration for the episode. I made a "Best Hits of Death Cab" CD for Rachel Bilson, who plays Summer. When Elliott Smith died, Peter Gallagher said he'd never heard of him, so I made him a greatest-hits CD. And when he and I were driving the other day, I had Death Cab on in my car and he liked it a lot.
Are you aware of how popular Seth Cohen is with the indie/emo kids out there? The other day, these ninth graders came up, and they were dressed just like I dress, and they yelled, "Seth Cohen is our hero!" I was like, "Wow, Seth is speaking for a generation!" I just hope I'm doing him justice. A.G.
