Review Summary: There is a role of a lifetime, and there's a song yet to be sung.
Kintsugi translates to the Japanese art of fixing broken pottery. So begins a somewhat newly inspired Death Cab For Cutie, one left in a mess of heartbreak and melancholy. Hits like “I Will Possess Your Heart” are nowhere to be found, instead sounding a bit like a streamlined version of The National’s
High Violet meets Coldplay’s
Ghost Stories. “No Room In Frame” begins the album with subdued, dark verses and a light drumbeat. Ben Gibbard sings with a bittersweet edge, repeated in almost every track. Soon after, a cathartically hopeful and devastatingly melancholic guitar break comes in until the song returns to the verses, Gibbard apathetically singing about his fame and simultaneous loneliness. “Black Sun” features catchy guitar over flurrying electronics and light mid tempo drumming, the closest to a radio friendly hit
Kintsugi possesses. These early highlights are where the album truly shines, before it slowly gives way to banality. The momentum established early on was so delicately orchestrated that the middle section of the album sadly fails to capture any real memorability. Song lengths are all relatively the same, tempos rarely change, and the music and lyrics are largely stagnant in one style or theme.
The middle cuts “You’ve Haunted Me All My Life” and “Everything’s A Ceiling” fail to pack any real emotional punch. The album seems to get mellower and more timid with every song, as if to reflect some kind of inward emotional spiral of depression and decline.
Kintsugi never fully recovers, but instead mildly returns some memorability toward the end with “El Dorado.” It begins with one of the most intense intros of the album. A wall of sound comes in along with a fast guitar line that builds before electronic drums enter over echoey vocals. It continues, with the intro guitar reappearing at the appropriate times. "Ingénue" follows, and succeeds at sounding both affectionate and frustrated at the same time. “Binary Sea” is a gentle piano driven ballad, mainly serving as a passable outro.
Most of the album’s highlights are contained in the first four tracks, also the album’s lead singles. It’s difficult not to be emotionally affected in one way or another when Ben Gibbard practically shouts
“I don't know why, I don't know why I return to the scenes of these crimes, where the hedgerows slowly wind through the ghosts of Beverly Drive. I don't know why, I don't know why, I don't know what I expect to find where all the news is second hand, and everything just goes on as planned” throughout “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive.” “Little Wanderer” is a loving ballad, expressing a fond farewell while reminiscing about the past. Despite these highlights, themes like these ultimately mar the potential for
Kintsugi to be a great album. Clichés are rampant throughout, particularly the repetitive lyrical themes of nearly every song revolving around Gibbard’s much publicized break-up with actress Zooey Deschanel.
Kintsugi is cloaked in melancholy and gray-skied gloom, a welcome return to form at least. Hopefully next time around they will focus on more adventurous and expansive themes to dwell inspiration from, as it does come dangerously close to being this year’s
Ghost Stories, albeit slightly less melodramatic. Like the uncertain final guitar note of “El Dorado,” the album’s final statement can be equated to one of introspective uncertainty, that in the wake of any seemingly hopeless situation, there is always hope to be found. Much like the album itself, that journey is well tread and worth taking, but fraught with missteps and questionable decisions along the way.
