onto the article.
there's a great article in volume 23 of american songwriter magazine about the new death cab for cutie album and if you don't mind picking up a copy i'd highly recommend it. if you'd rather not, the full article is actually available online here the album is called "narrow stairs" and frontman ben gibbard calls it his "favorite album that we've ever done." gibbard and guitarist/producer chris walla talk at length in the article about how the process was a much more organic one this time around than on their previous release, plans. "it just feels like an album made by a band, instead of a recording made bit by bit while the other guys are out of the room playing ... that just doesn't feel like a band experience." gibbard said.
narrow stairs is referred to as both a departure for the band and a return to form. gibbard and walla agree that it is darker than previous installments in the dcfc catalogue, but gibbard also says that his writing process on plans was heavily influenced by his decision to write the majority of the songs on piano. "i wasn't feeling very inspired by my guitar. for some reason, i would pick up the guitar and immediately put it down, as if it were broken. i think that album had a lot of piano, because it was the first time i ever actually owned a piano...so most of those songs were written on piano, keyboard, or in some kind of protools capacity." ben says that he made a conscious effort to make sure all of the new songs could be played on an acoustic guitar and that he "was making sure all of the songs had choruses and taking more of a traditional approach to songwriting."
the computer played an integral role in creating the band's last release, with very little of the final performance created live by a full band. though they returned to analog recording (rather than digital) and toned down the use of pre-recorded loops in the songwriting, protools and the like are still useful tools when it comes to experimenting with the arrangement. gibbard says the unlimited options afforded by a computer can be both freeing and overwhelming at the same time.
one of the sections in the interview i found most interesting was towards the end of the article when american songwriter asked ben about his songwriting process in general. he says that he didn't really feel his lyrical abilities come into their own until the band's second album, "we have the facts and we're voting yes" when he wrote the song called "company calls epilogue". "i had concocted this narrative of going to the wedding of someone that you used to be in love with...and i was very proud of the descriptive nature of the song." gibbard also says, "i want to write songs with complete sentences, i almost have this obsession with shortchanging words. i would never be so pretentious to say that my lyrics are poetry. that's the most annoying thing ever and one of my biggest pet peeves as a songwriter...poems are poems. song lyrics are for songs."
hearing about professional musicians and their struggles finding their voice or coming into their own lyrically is really encouraging to me, that maybe if i keep trying and keep writing i'll be able to find something similar. i hope you found that interesting, and i hope it got you as excited for 'narrow stairs' as i am!
thanks for reading,
-loren
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