Death Cab For Cutie
‘Narrow Stairs’
(Atlantic)

Death Cab For Cutie guitarist/ multi-instrumentalist Chris Walla characterises their sixth album as “having teeth”, a summarisation that couldn’t be more apt.

Death Cab For Cutie have come up with the most ambitious and varied music of their career.

While many bands in Death Cab’s situation would try to recreate the success of hit songs like ‘Soul Meets Body’ or ‘I Will Follow You Into The Dark’, instead the band have crafted the most ambitious and varied album of their career by simply doing what they’ve been doing since they formed in Bellingham, Washington a decade ago – made a brilliant record that refuses to pander, while stretching the artistic boundaries of what a Death Cab For Cutie record should sound like.

The heightened amount of collaboration on these new songs makes ‘Narrow Stairs’ the climatic culmination of Death Cab’s first ten years. There is also a live feel to these recordings that make for the band’s most aggressive record to date.

Opening track ‘Bixby Canyon Bridge’ is an excellent overreaching metaphor for the sonic scope of ‘Narrow Stairs’. The song begins somewhat characteristically, with Gibbard singing about “descending a dusty gravel ridge” over an ebbing bed of subdued synths and chiming guitars before veering into a syncopated drum-and-guitar breakdown.

While it hasn’t been an easy road to get to this point, Death Cab insist that more than anything, this next chapter in the band’s evolution is due to the fact that they’re relating both as individuals and band mates. Tension might add to the records of acts like Metallica and Fleetwood Mac, but in Death Cab For Cutie’s case its obvious that the better they are getting on, the better their music gets.
(4/5)

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