Review: Narrow Stairs – Death Cab For Cutie

Ben Gibbard is the soft spot in your heart. His words are the poetry of someone who understands the particular connection between music and relationships. This makes his music as visual as it is sonic, picking at small details, the ones that everyone else forgets but you remember. Because they matter.

Itâ??s this distinct attribute that Gibbard has evolved over the span of six studio albums that makes his music intensely personal. Which is why Narrow Stairs is one of the best albums of 2008.

Head downstairs for the full review + Indiecision.

2005â??s Plans elevated Death Cab from indie darlings to tempered mainstream significance. Three years and a successful side project later, Gibbard and Co. return with an album thatâ??s clearly a step up, and away, from its predecessor. Plans was elaborate and vast with sweeping sounds immaculately produced by Chris Walla. Stairs is more casual. The first single â??I Will Possess Your Heartâ?? features a four minute long intro with a rhythmic bass line, piano and energetic drums. The arrangements are discarded for a punchier sound, driven essentially with guitars and drums.

There are so many ways Death Cab couldâ??ve got this wrong. For starters, this is unlike them. Or unlike what weâ??ve come to expect of them. Itâ??s fast, almost brash. How can heartfelt emotives hope to stand strong in the fury of jarring distortions and crashing cymbals? On â??You Can Do Better Than Meâ?? Gibbard sings â??Iâ??m starting to feel we stayed together out of fear of dying aloneâ? in the midst of a marching beat and a Ben Folds-ish piano rhythm. The product is as powerful as it wouldâ??ve been if it was just Gibbard and his acoustic.

All Death Cabâ??s stories are visually enticing. On â??Grapevine Firesâ?? he describes the experience of a man and his lover who take a trip to a cemetery with her daughter. Here they watch the daughter dance against the backdrop of a brush fire thatâ??s growing fast. Gibbard, in his typical choir-boy voice, sings â??But I couldnâ??t think of anywhere I wouldâ??ve rather been, to watch it all burn awayâ? completing the vivid picture with a flush. Itâ??s difficult not to be moved.

Stairs is arguable Death Cabâ??s best work. Itâ??s effortless, precise and rich. Gibbard knows what makes an album stick. And on Stairs he executes this knowledge perfectly.

Indiecision: A-

This review and other great music stories can be checked out in the issue of JAM magazine currently out on stands.

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