Kintsugi (Atlantic records)

An indie rock band usually hits its creative peak within its first few records. Bands typically release promising debuts, followed by over-hyped sophomore efforts and masterpiece third or fourth records, after which subsequent output is judged against the standards of that one classic album.

Bands don'€™t ask for peaks to happen; they happen naturally, through the effects of aging on the mind and body, or the immense (sometimes suffocating) expectations of fans.

Death Cab for Cutie is a great example of this natural evolution. After starting out in the 1990s, many fans today regard the 2003 album, Transatlanticism, as the band'€™s magnum opus, using it as the standard to which all the subsequent records are held. And who can blame them, really? It'€™s a terrific record.  

Three more albums and 12 years later, Death Cab has returned in 2015 with Kintsugi (Atlantic Records): a familiar-sounding album that bears the weight of several recent shifts in the life of a band showcasing the same musical chops they exhibited in 2003. Despite some major changes, it seems the band has settled.

Longtime guitarist, producer and cofounder Chris Walla, a crucial part of the Death Cab songwriting process, left the band in 2014, leaving Ben Gibbard, Nick Harmer and Jason McGerr to continue on as a trio. Vocalist Gibbard'€™s 2011 divorce from actress Zooey Deschanel, months after the band released Codes and Keys in the same year, is evident throughout the album'€™s lyrics.

Death Cab is regarded as something of an indie rock behemoth; a cohort of elder statesmen whom young musicians look up to, and whose eight-record catalog read like separate chapters of the textbook indie rock sound.  

The album sounds like what Death Cab is supposed to sound like: Death Cab. On the one hand, it was the band'€™s solid intrapersonal lyricism, friendly guitar melodies and sensible drumming that made their music enjoyable and emotionally relatable in the first place.  

On the other hand, the established sound acts like a massive safety net '€” almost a hammock '€” where their musical ideas lie comfortably, rarely taxing themselves.

Critics tend to describe long-running indie rock bands the same way: They have '€œsettled into their sound'€, without much experimentation or flare (as in their younger days), until they ultimately disband.

Death Cab is not alone. Other 2000s-era indie darlings such as Belle and Sebastian, Modest Mouse and (especially) The Decemberists have fallen into this unenviable rut, and these bands'€™ latest albums are presented either as the sound of their attempt to crawl back to the surface, or the sound of settling.  

Death Cab'€™s glory years may be behind them, but the quality of their songwriting has survived to the present. Even in Walla'€™s absence, the band manages to retain its greatness.

Death Cab ultimately ends up playing it safe. Maybe Gibbard and Co. will push the boundaries in a later release, but for now, it seems they merely needed an outlet for channeling their reactions to recent upheavals.

Musically, what we get is another Death Cab for Cutie record, and an addition to the Ben Gibbard lyric-book of heartbreak. And frankly, that'€™s not such a bad thing.

Popular

Early school a new burden

Rights group call for probe into alleged extrajudicial killing in Nduga

Suspected killer of Minnesota lawmaker caught after two-day manhunt