Death Cab For Everyone: A Discussion with Bassist Nick Harmer

(Published in The Mirror 10/27/05)
THE REVIEW

In a world where simple yet powerful poetic lyrics take a back seat to the musical superabundance and watered down attempts at brilliance that flood the airwaves, bands like Death Cab for Cutie serve as humble messianic figures, forcing the pop crowd to think a little.

A young man in the front row leans on the edge of the stage, smiles and shuts his eyes. The girl next to him puts her arm around him.

That's sort of what a Death Cab for Cutie concert is; a friendly arm around the shoulder. It's plenty energetic though, and they fit a surprising amount of layered sounds into their songs, which is surprising for such a humble quartet. In fact, the live versions of their songs are much more energetic than their studio album counterparts.

Taking the stage casually and confidently in Providence, RI at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel Saturday, lead singer Ben Gibbard sauntered in the darkness toward his microphone as over a thousand fans filled the air with their praise. He gently thanked them for coming.

With a face you'd expect to see in a coffee shop, leaning over a thick philosophical novel ignoring the people around him, he smiles across the stage to guitarist, producer and friend Chris Walla. They begin with the first track off their new hit album Plans, "Marching Bands of Manhattan."

The show continued with the "The New Year" from Transatlanticism, and their new single "Soul Meets Body" and eventually into a wide but carefully chose range of new and old songs.

Watching the next song "Title and Registration," as Gibbard snaps a drum stick on two electronic drum pads to produce the song's unique beat, he strains his face and body to let out the introspective and soft high notes he's known for.

From 5 feet away was as surreal as it gets for this wide-eyed college boy who can't bring himself to take the band's new album out of his CD player and who's rented the band's documentary twice.

The show sustained a level of passion and intensity that is unparalleled by most other humble bands and rarely achieved by most over-the-top light show wielding bands. Determined to hit every note perfectly and to reproduce every song fairly and accurately, Gibbard and Walla sometimes bounced from keyboard to guitar during the course of one song, in a balancing act.

Instead of using their celebrity and money to purchase an extra band member to relieve them of these duties, they embrace the "indie" feel that this brings to the show.

Many are noticing the film companies are following the pattern of less-is-more today too, with movies like the Constant Gardner, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Garden State. Of course, in both genres there are many underground and independent projects that use this same minimalist approach. Most with this mindset never get to see the profits that come with the success of a blockbuster or a hit album.

Death Cab for Cutie, on the other hand - they have the Spin Cover story, the MTV appearances, the Rolling Stone feature story, the OC appearances, the NPR webcast and interview and the year-long line of sold out shows across the whole world. They've been mass-produced and mass-consumed ever since their 2003 release of "Transatlanticism," but they still feel like art.

The men ended their show after only an hour and a half or so. But it was the encore that brought the already warm and affable crowd closer together in an emotional episode that few could expect.

Gibbard approached the microphone in near darkness alone with an acoustic guitar to play his song about a dying loved one, "I Will Follow You into the Dark." After a lesser-known song, "Title Track," the show ended with the slow and powerful song "Transatlanticism," and Gibbard belted out the line "I need you so much closer" in a very personal goodbye to all his new friends at Lupo's.

THE INTERVIEW

After years of touring and millions of albums sold, it is refreshing to see this popular band still playing the medium-large sized clubs when they could easily fill stadiums. It's easy to wonder if the next step will be to abandon the living room feeling of the clubs and fill the larger, less intimate venues.

In a telephone discussion about mass production and consumption in reference to his band's creative process, Death Cab bassist Nick Harmer said, "We can't play a place like Lupo's four nights in a row [to accomidate the masses], but there will be a limit to how big we go."

He expressed the band's conviction to not play in "ultradomes" but their desire to give everyone who wants to see them a chance to see them.

Death Cab's lyricist Gibbard has a unique approach to songwriting that draws comparisons between things like glove compartments, hospital waiting rooms and foggy eye-glasses and emotions like love, pain and loneliness. These unconventional associations give their music a strong and beautifully original artistic feel.

But with a thousand audience members singing every lyric, wouldn't that lessen the value of that art? Wouldn't that make it too popular to be considered significant and thought-provoking? No, Death Cab for Cutie pulls it off.

Harmer explained this by saying, "I strongly believe that how readily accessible something is does not diminish its artistic value."

Harmer majored in English and Cultural theory in college and said about the band as a whole, "we are life-long learners."

Maybe that's it; that the band is made up of a bunch of intellectuals as opposed to a bunch of rock stars. This new brand of rock star is not foreign to the public, but for some reason Death Cab makes it refreshing and exciting.

After trying to explain the mysterious reason behind the fact that all Death Cab songs have such a high quality to them, and why the band is continually successful with their quaint little tracks, Harmer laughed and offered these words of wisdom:

"Never ask a centipede how it walks, or it will trip."

The men are millionaires, and they get that money because of creative prowess. They're kind of a big deal. And still they aren't pompous asses. They know where they stand and what they stand for and it is ridiculously apparent that nothing can stand between them and what they want to do.

A perfect example of this is their new record label contract with Atlantic. Big-name record companies like Atlantic are notorious for their cramping approach to production.

Harmer said, "We have a very artist-friendly contract with Atlantic"

To put an end to an inspiring telephone interview with a member of one of the most intriguing bands of today, Harmer assured his fans, "we've always made decisions we've wanted to make...and we are not interested in betraying ourselves or betraying our fans or betraying our legacy."