With sales of recently-released Plans soaring, Seattle's best-kept little indie secret no longer believes that "instincts are misleading." Death Cab for Cutie's explosion into the mainstream (and onto the sets of The O.C.) has taken them on a continuous rollercoaster ride, one that they're not looking to get off anytime soon.
tableau: How did you first get involved with the band?
Nick Harmer: We formed in college when all going to school in Bellingham, Washington. Or, at least Ben and I were going to school there. But Chris and Jason who actually is our drummer now, but wasn't the first drummer in the band, we all sort of lived up in Bellingham together and were all friends up there. I was actually in a band with Jason for a few years before Death Cab like even started and I was leaving that band at the same time that Ben sort of recorded these songs with Chris. We made this little cassette tape called You Can Play These Songs with Cords and we put that out sort of into the world, giving it to friends and stuff and everyone was really excited about it and said "You should play some live shows". So, I knew Ben we were friends, and I was a bass player and he said, "Hey, wanna play bass?" and I said "Heck, yeah that sounds great" and I just joined the band right after that. And then right after I joined, Chris had a friend named Nathan who played drums and we all got together and re-recorded Something About Airplanes and our sup put the cd out and we've just been sort of working steadily since then and then obviously right before Transatlanticism, after a few drummer switches, we ended up hiring Jason.
Where exactly does the band name come from?
Ben actually chose the band name and he came across it in a movie called The Magical Mystery Tour that The Beatles made, but they didn't write the song or own the song "Death Cab for Cutie". Actually, the song is in the movie, there is this random part where John and Paul go into this sort of lounge, sort of tent, sort of cabaret thing and there's a guy singing a song called "Death Cab for Cutie" and Ben says, "That sounds pretty funny, let's go ahead and pick that."
How do you guys feel about the release of Plans?
[We] feel great about it. Yeah, we were really excited that it's out and I don't know we're really happy with the way the record turned out. We're really excited to bring some of the new songs into our live set and I dunno I think it's going to be a really fun tour this fall.
How long did the album take to complete?
About three months. We started writing in January of this year and then started putting demos and stuff together in February and then March we were in Massachusetts for a month and then we came back in April and recorded in Seattle for a month and then in May we began mixes and then turned the record in early June. So it's about, I guess, five months all in, but we only spent about two months in the studio recording and then another month mixing.
Where does the album name come from?
I think it just sort of fit with the themes of a lot of the songs on the record and we kind of liked how the word is sort of ambiguous, you know. We have a lot of plans that we are making right now. This record is also a lot of plans coming to fruition. So I mean we kind of liked the sort of openness of the word. You know, I think that we are kind of in a transition right now moving from our sup to Atlantic and our band was growing in awareness and things like that. So, it just sort of seemed to make a lot of sense.
What's your recording studio like at Longview Farms?
It's a big fucking barn. Uh, built in 1909 or some shit like that. I mean it was just this huge barn that the top half of it was a recording studio with all these different rooms and we actually lived in there too. There were you know like bedrooms and stuff we lived in and then, I'm telling you truthfully, downstairs they still kept horses [laughs] at the very basement of the barn and they would run the horses in every day and like run them out every morning and run them in every night because it was wintertime there. It was just really surreal but it was great. We were really isolated, away from everything which I think at times was fantastic and then at times kind of drives you crazy, you know, like The Shining. It really helped us think on our music and focus on our record without getting sort of caught up in asking ourselves too many questions about the process.
What would you describe the mood of Plans as?
I would say it's a very introspective record. I think that it asks a lot of questions more so than it answers, lyrically anyways. And I don't know, I feel like overall it's definitely sort of mellower than our last record sort of is. I feel like it has it's own little experience that happens with it. I think overall it's pretty introspective and sort of a heavy record.
How does it differ/relate to your past albums?
I think it's probably more similar to Transatlanticism just in terms of kind of a lot of the arrangements and some of the sounds and stuff like that than some of our earlier records. But, we always say, and it's true, that making records is like having kids, you know, every one of them turns out different. Sometimes you have a kid that's a ballerina, sometimes you have a kid that wants to be a firefighter, some kids want to become nuclear physicists and whatever. So, you know, its related to our other records in the sense that its part of our family but it's kind of its own thing.
Where do you draw your inspiration from? What inspires you guys?
I think that we sort of draw them from life, you know--living and you meet people and you hear stories. I dunno, I think that we've all grown up as people that are pretty interested and curious in the human condition and what it's like to live and explore and go do stuff. And I think that probably all of us at the end of the day are pretty good listeners and like hearing people's stories and I think that really comes through in a lot of Ben's lyrics for sure and a lot of the music has a lot to do with where we are all at in our headspace when we all write music together. I guess our inspiration comes from not only all of the bands that we listened to growing up, and wanting to be in rock bands and stuff, but also just sort of that we want to make music that seems like it matters now and that kind of means something.
Do your songs tend to be so sad for a reason?
No, I mean we like to use the word bittersweet. It's kind of like life, you know, I don't know anybody that has consistently great days. There's sometimes where some days are great and some days aren't and you know, it's that kind of rollercoaster ride that happens as you live. I don't think we try to make our songs very sad I just think we try to recognize the bitter sweetness of life and living and just sort of how you can be feeling great one moment and then somebody can make a comment to you and just in an off-handed way and you take it in the wrong way and suddenly it wrecks your afternoon, you know, or you can get your heart broken in a phone call or things can change. On the television a hurricane smashes into the country and suddenly like people's lives are destroyed. We're not trying to be deliberately sad, but I think that there is a sort of bittersweet quality about life, where despite all these things that happen, there is also love and also good things that are amidst all of that stuff too.
What would you say your favorite track on Plans is?
My favorite track on Plans is, well it changes a lot of course. I think my favorite track for a long time was the first one "Marching Bands of Manhattan". But now it's "Your Heart Is an Empty Room".
Any interesting stories behind any of the tracks?
A lot of the stories are Ben's stories as a lyricist. It's hard to say. I don't think there is anything sort of crazy. One story that I do know that's kind of interesting is for the song "What Sarah Said" and when we say "Love is watching someone die". We have this good friend named Sarah who was on tour with us once and she's married to the bass player in this band called The Velveteen. They have a great relationship and she was just kind of talking one day when we were all sitting around and she was like "You know, it's just kind of weird, you know, I look at Josh and it just occurred to me the other day when I was looking at him that, you know, I have to watch him die. I'm going to spend the rest of my life with this person and I'm going to have to watch him die," and it was such a bittersweet sort of thing of being in a relationship with someone and then you know, kind of like your relationship with your parents or grandparents or your friends or any of that stuff, any relationship in your life that you think is going to last forever. There is mortality attached to that and the fact that at some point somebody's going to die and it's either you or them and someone's going to have to be there watching it happen and it's kind of, I dunno, there's also this kind of positive quality to that how wonderful it is that you can find someone in all the millions of people on the planet and you found that someone in your life that you can be with until you die. You know that kind of a
Read More
The best albums of 2014
By Noah Zeidman | December 4, 2014Across genres, it has been a pretty great year in music.
Top 10 movies of 2014
December 4, 2014This has been an excellent year for film, offering everything from gripping blockbusters to innovative personal films.
Iggy Azalea is “Reclassified”
December 4, 2014It has become common practice among music artists to repackage their albums in an effort to simultaneously boost single sales and dish out new content by slightly renaming the album or slapping “Deluxe” onto the title.
