NARROW STAIRS is the 6th album by American indie rock outfit Death Cab For Cutie, released 2008. After releasing their first album on a major record label with 2005's PLANS, where does Death Cab find themselves here?
I've wanted to talk about another DCFC record on the blog for a good while now- since giving their 4th album a fairly glowing review I've been thru the majority of their studio work; but picking a single album to talk about over a 20 year period was understandably difficult. But this one leaped out at me, and here's why.
I don't think NARROW STAIRS is the best DCFC album. I don't even think it's in my top 5; but to me it kind of represents a pivotal moment in the band's history. Let's start at the start.
BIXBY CANYON BRIDGE opens the album- the track reeks of loss and has this pretty guitar arpeggio until it switches to these staccato guitar/drum stabs as Ben Gibbard's vocal passage gets more and more distorted as he repeats "a dream, a dream, a dream....." and eventually gets entirely overlapped by these massive pounding drums and disgusting overdriven guitar and unrelenting basslines, the track ends in this head pounding cacophony with feedbacking electronics, and the lyrics end similarly uncomfortably with the song's narrator finding little resolves under said bridge. This track gives the album a feeling of incredible potential from it's get go- DCFC have demonstrated their aptitude for making songs that get extremely loud, so what do they do o capitalise on it?
Track 2 is the 8 and a half minute I WILL POSSESS YOUR HEART- perhaps one of the band's most famous songs- the track tries to start on this piano line before being undercut by the tracks' infinitely catchy bassline- the atmosphere with the humming electronics is menacing and unnerving, and the band are mostly than happy to dwell and build on this riff for minutes on end with dissonant echoing guitar parts and aloof piano lines. The track is such a masterclass in atmosphere and patience, but instead of building to another cacophony, it gives way to Gibbard's clean vocal passage where he confidently proclaims he will "possess your heart". The track doesn't have words for the first 4 and a half minutes, and I think that shows a real tenacity and willingness to tear things up that was largely absent from 2005's PLANS. The track is easily one of their best.
So at this point, you'd hope the album would keep trying to push the band's sound to new sonic territories, but the tone of the album shifts kind of dramatically after this point- the tracks become noticeably more pop-y; NO SUNLIGHT has this misanthropic bassline, but the track's other melodies are just fairly basic pop numbers, the main melodic "no sunlight, no sunlight" has this fairy-tale sugar coated simplicity to it and the guitars sound railed in too. The bassline sits under everything with the same growl as the start, but aside from the headbanging guitar stabs in the refrain it's no where near and out there as the first few tracks.
It's then followed by "CATH..." which in terms of indie pop/rock couldn't really be safer: the melodic lines are kind of dull and unchallenging, it sounds super sanitised like it's going for radio play, which was no where near the domain DCFC had been aiming for before. It's hard to say whether it was studio meddling a la "alright, you've had your crazy noise ballad and 8 minute post rock-ish number, now write something easy to swallow." or the band just wanted to go back to safer waters after the first few tracks. It's worth saying that Chris Walla, founding member and sole producer for the majority of the band's lifespan, left the band in 2015, citing something to the effect of the band being creatively stagnant, which you may have well guessed at this point becomes a running theme in the record.
The remaining 25 or so minutes on the record flip flops between slightly above and slightly below average tunes- with GRAPEVINE FIRES, TALKING BIRD and YOUR NEW TWIN SIZED BED being some of least exciting (tho YNTSB is a guilty pleasure of mine) and LONG DIVISION and PITY AND FEAR being some other highlights.
I think the album biggest problem is just that the album feels kind of light on ideas: alot of the tracks feel kind of samey. I think I can confidently say that every (or nearly every) track on PLANS had it's own unique identity, but alot of the tracks here feel they have this unnatural cap of how interesting they're allowed to be slapped on for some reason. capping off the records like this obviously worked for the record company however- the album went to number 1 in America and Canada, even going gold in the states. The record just doesn't feel consistent, which I think is what hurts it most, even their less exciting records like Kitsungi end up being more engaging track-for-track despite having lower peaks. I guess it's just an album with initially alot of promise that doesnt end up delivering. Maybe Gibbard was preoccupied at the time, I mean he clearly couldn't even find the time to go to the barbers so who knows. But overall NARROW STAIRS just ends up being a largely unexciting album despite some high quality singles. Probably not required listening unless you're going thru the band's whole discography.
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