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College Tribune | November 25th 2008
MUSIC
eath Cab band closed to suggestions? It’s a resounding no. “I think that more and more we’ve got better at making suggestions and taking suggestions because the band has been a band for almost eleven years now – there’s no point in not speaking your mind, there’s no point in not making suggestions whether they work out or not, it’s better to stick with the honesty policy and deal with growing pains as they come, but the good news is that I feel that we’ve survived most of those. That’s years of trying to carve out enough space for yourself in a broken down van on a highway.” It has helped the band no end that each has their own space and as a result many other solo records have come from Death Cab; “The AllTime Quarterback was a collection of stuff from a long time ago that was just sitting around and Ben wanted to get out, and our old label Barsuk decided to put
demos, we get them individually and then we get together and talk about our favourites – the A list, the B list and the C list if we get to it – and then prioritise what it is we’re gravitating towards. And then the good thing about Ben is that he’s not so precious about the arrangements so that whatever he puts down has to be a part so there’s a lot of cases where a song gets completely stripped apart and built back up again and the only thing that could remain is the lyric or a bass line or something small like that. Then again, there’s also incidents where he really nails what the spirit of the song really needs to be in demo form and it’s tough to break away from it, but we all collaborate on each other’s parts and make suggestions and then when we play live. It’s each man for himself in terms of the fact you’re in charge of your own thing and however you want to convey that energy to the audience.” After over a decade, are the
it out. I don’t know of how many people know the band – there was never a tour or anything. I
“I look back on old artists like old bebop artists and jazz musicians who put forty-plus albums in the world, and people love that. It’s like collecting pieces of art – well, it is art” mean, we all have collections of music that eventually end up somewhere in the world, like Chris’s solo record from last year. You might as well take the opportunity to leave your mark as much as possible. I look back on old artists like old bebop artists and jazz musicians who put forty-plus albums in the world, and people love that. It’s like collecting pieces of art – well, it is art. I hope that people have a collection of Death Cab someday that eventually gets out in the world. The band are not sure what comes next but they do seem to be able to be tempted into some different spheres; “We love film, we love writing, Nick has directed a few videos, and if there was ever a great marriage of screenplay and music I’m sure that Death Cab would jump at the opportunity, but I can’t say that there’s anything that we’ve actively got in the works right now. We’re more into tour-mode and recording-record-mode, and looking towards the next record as well. But there may be a time, who knows? Maybe it’ll be a rock opera, there’s always room for creativity though amongst us all and we all encourage one another. We’ll see what happens.” In closing, we go right back to the beginning with the conception of the band and the choosing of the name: “The name is actually a name of a song from the sixties by a band called The
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band – and they were this sort of weird artrocky band – and this tune was sort of a Do-Wop tune, but I think most people found out about them because when the Beatles made the movie Magical Mystery Tour, in the background of one of the scenes the band are playing this song, this weird Do-Wop song. And Ben has always been a big Beatles fan, as we all are – he just had a wild hair when he was young that if he ever had a band he’d call them Death Cab for Cutie – and he had been playing music in other bands for years but that particular name stuck in his head and the first record kind of stuck with the world, or at least the public, and the rest is history.”
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