Overall, “Narrow Stairs” is a good record that, on more than one occasion, achieves greatness (see: “Grapevine Fires,” a bittersweet waltz that encapsulates Gibbard and his bandmates’ ability to turn poetry into song). Longtime fans will likely wonder if the woman is a younger incarnation of the subject of Transatlanticism’s “Death of an Interior Decorator.” “Cath, it seems that you lived someone else’s dream / In a hand-me-down wedding dress / Where the things that could have been are repressed,” Gibbard sings. The subject of “Cath … ” is a bride who suddenly realizes her life is nothing like she imagined it would be. “Narrow Stairs” revisits Gibbard’s knack for touching metaphors, most notably on “Your New Twin Sized Bed.” “You look so defeated lying there in your new twin sized bed,” he muses, “With a single pillow underneath your single head.” On the bouncy “No Sunlight” (this record’s “Soul Meets Body”) the singer cements his position as potentially the only vocalist who can make the line “The optimist died inside of me” sound gleeful.įor all the relationship troubles Gibbard speaks of in his songs, he has an uncanny ability to understand the female psyche. Need an example? How about the band’s decision to release “I Will Possess Your Heart,” an eight-and-a-half-minute epic, as the album’s first single? A daring move to say the least, but one that works, thanks in large part to the groovy bassline courtesy of Harmer that anchors the extended jam. If anything, the band’s done the opposite exploring new directions in terms of song structure and demonstrating a fearless disregard for the risk of alienating listeners. After all, wasn’t the number-one slot a position occupied by Mariah Carey only a few weeks prior?īut one thing no one can accuse Death Cab for Cutie of doing is altering its sound to reach a larger fan base.

The members of Death Cab for Cutie (singer Ben Gibbard, guitarist Chris Walla, bassist Nick Harmer and drummer Jason McGerr) have found themselves in that precarious position that independent bands both court and are simultaneously wary of - achieving undeniable mainstream success, and all the pressures and less-than-admirable associations that come with it. The band’s residency at the top of the charts was short-lived - one week, before they were overtaken by 3 Doors Down - but significant. The fictional character and Death Cab uber-fan from the late television sitcom, “The O.C.” arguably set the wheels in motion for the indie darling’s mainstream success (the New York Times’ comically highbrow description of the group is “a bookish indie-rock quartet from Seattle”). When I heard that Death Cab for Cutie’s “Narrow Stairs,” which was released last month, was the number one album in the country, my first thought was, “I wonder what Seth Cohen would think.”

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