Review Summary: The indie-pop outfit's darkest offering yet hits more than it misses, but is a fairly heavy listen compared to their previous material.
Although music is usually something people engage with for the sake of enjoyment, certain elements involved in its creation and its content always have and (hopefully) always will make sides of the art form more conducive to discontent and misery. Melodramatic as it sounds, most people have been picked up by music at some point in their lives, be it more avid listeners in the form of albums that really hit home, or just wound up students finding solace in danceable club anthems. One of the more sinister sides to this already dark face of music is in the writing process and how it so often seems to be enhanced by a heightened state of depression or sadness.
As you'll find noted on a good few music news websites, Death Cab for Cutie frontman, lyricist and vocalist Ben Gibbard is engaged to a girl one must assume is the love of his life. If nothing else, a decade of pensieve, defeatist and thoughtful songwriting has taught us that he wouldn't have it any other way. With that in mind, we can probably expect Death Cab's next effort to be a more extreme and jolly version of Plans, with sunshine and butterflies bursting out of every seam, and lyrics addressing the brighter side of romance and happiness. And it probably won't work. What a good thing, then, that in the meantime we have at our disposal the indie-pop outfit's darkest offering yet. Narrow Stairs shows a side of Gibbard, and Death Cab as a whole, that has always been there in glimmers, but had never really dominated on any other album.
Narrow Stairs isn't evil. It's not satanic, or disturbed on the kind of level for which you'd suggest psychotherapy. Quite. But it does showcase a less cheery side to the band's ever-present fragile nature that you might not be used to. Transatlanticism was far from a happy record, when you look at the lyrics and the mid-tempo odes to regret and loss, but the title-track had the chorus of "So come on" at its climax and every other track redeemed itself somewhat. There are uplifting moments here, too, but they're nowhere nearly as common as on any of the bands previous LPs. For that matter, it's difficult to pick out a lyrically happy moment. Granted, Gibbard has never been too interested in conveying joy, but there's usually something there. Passenger Seat and I Will Follow You Into The Dark - two of the band's most strikingly emotional pieces - are both inherently optimistic. You just can't apply that description anywhere here. Just look at that album art. Disjointed, fragmented and, quite frankly, a bit of a mess. Coupled with the claustrophobia of the record's title, it's already obvious that this is not going to reach the easy-listening heights of 2005's Plans.
But all of this is surely a good thing. Nobody wanted Plans mark 2; most of the band's fanbase had felt slightly disappointed by their major label debut anyway. Narrow Stairs' lead single, I Will Possess Your Heart, instantly demonstrated ambition on Death Cab's part by way of its 8:35 runtime, the first half of which is instrumental. What seems like a jam session, riding on a simple and catchy bassline which is genuinely hooky enough to get stuck in your head for days. When it's joined by Jason McGerr's equally infectious drumming and a couple of occasional piano chords, it's mesmerizing that something so simple and (credit Walla) so well produced can keep you on the edge of your seat for a whole four minutes, at which point the whole thing builds to a crescendo that cuts out, leaving Gibbard's creepy vocals atop the drums and a minimalist guitar line. The bridge which arrives later is euphoric despite being two lines long, and when the song ends and fades into No Sunlight you're left with the knowledge that you've just listened to 8 minutes of music, but no idea quite where all that time went.
That No Sunlight is the third track on the album is quite frankly life-saving given the weight carried by the first two tracks of Narrow Stairs, Bixby Canyon Bridge, the opener, is one of the album's stand-outs, referencing Jack Kerouac and being some of the most openly philosophical music Death Cab have produced to date. Starting ambient, it explodes in pulsing drumbeats and slams of the bass after about a minute, and gains momentum only to drop it for the final come-down both lyrically and musically. So when No Sunlight, a quirky little loss-of-youth number hits your eardrums at track 3, it's a welcome experience to be able to assume safely that the whole album will not be as dense as its first two tracks. Don't be fooled though; No Sunlight's seemingly cheerful piano and faintly upbeat rhythm section disguise a song whose meaning is no lighter than anything else on offer here.
The bass on Narrow Stairs is truly one of the most striking performances by a mainstream bassist in recent years. As well as the first three tracks, Talking Bird and Long Division are also practically carried by Nicholas Harmer's lines, with McGerr's drumming in close pursuit. The rhythm section of almost every track ensures that the album maintains a sufficient level of tension throughout, and enables Gibbard and Walla to focus on the elaboration they are so good at. Gibbard claimed in one interview that closer The Ice Is Getting Thinner is the first song on which he feels Death Cab have ever managed to capture a mood with the music they attach to his lyrics, but that is simply not the case. The album's best track, Grapevine Fires, somehow manages to accomplish a sort of melancholy version of the apocalypse, true to Gibbard's resigned lyrics - 'we watched the plumes paint the sky grey / as she laughed and danced through the field of graves / and there I knew it would be alright' - which are the closest thing to happy you will find all album long. The closer certainly does embody the icy nature of a relationship falling through, but it is far from Narrow Stairs' most impressive moment of imagery.
Every single track here except the first and last sees Gibbard create a character or a situation in which he is able to place himself and describe the complex emotional mindsets with pinpoint precision; there is good argument for this being Death Cab’s real photo album, riddled with people you half-recognise and half wish you didn’t. The problem is that sometimes the people are just too miserable and too disheartening to make you want to continue. Sure, you might take the lesson from Cath… never to settle for less than perfection in love, but the song itself doesn’t leave you feeling upbeat or any more optimistic. Beyond that, one of Gibbard’s primary lyrical qualities was how relatable his material was; the fact that these songs are clearly mostly invented characters serves only to shatter the illusion in that respect.
Out-of-place African influence on Your New Twin Sized Bed epitomises Narrow Stairs’ other main flaw – its fractured and scatter-brained arrangement. To a point, the lack of consistency (for a brilliant example see the way in which penultimate track Pity And Fear ends abruptly for seemingly no reason other than it sounding sort of cool in isolation) renders the album interesting, but past that point – and it goes a fair way past – it just makes it a difficult listen, which is not what Death Cab usually do, and is not what they do best. To make it worse, a lot of the vocal melodies (Cath…, Talking Bird and Pity And Fear especially) seem unexciting and almost blend into one, which is atypical of a band usually so on-form with that kind of hook-writing. Hooks are present here, but they seem downtrodden and a little weary in places.
All in all, however, this album is a success. Some of the best material Death Cab have ever put out is contained in this 45-minute journey through insecurity and sadness, despite it being notably different to both Transatlanticism and Plans. Narrow Stairs is nowhere nearly as immediate as either of those were, and will probably take time to grow on non-veterans of Death Cab’s music, but it’s well worth giving this album a few spins before you decide whether to be moved by it or just move on; it will almost certainly affect you in some way. Maybe if Gibbard is married by the time of their next release we might see something a little bit less apocalyptic and a little bit more Death Cab.
