Wed
16
Jul
2008
Death Cab For Cutie
How did the production of
Narrow Stairs differ to Plans?
CW: Narrow Stairs was recorded pretty much live, I mean that’s really the biggest thing. Plans was something that was
constructed piece by piece, instrument by instrument, part by part. In a way its kind of easier to manage a project like that if you’re doing it piece by piece because at the front end you’re just
setting up one microphone and getting one sound at a time, but then on the tail-end you have to glue them all together, and make them make sense together, and that takes forever, and its kind of a
painful process.
So was it longer?
CW: I think ultimately it’s been about the same amount of time. It’s just more work on the front end to do everything
live, but it kind of mixes itself a little bit more
Drummer: The other big difference was that this record was to tape, as opposed to a digital platform last time. So you need to make sure you are comfortable with
your performances and you have to make decisions on the fly because you don’t have the ability to edit in the same way.
What have you gained from making Narrow Stairs?
CW: We’ve gained our sixth record! Which is nice! It’s not like each record is sort of a gain. It’s just another
opportunity to share music with people and just get to play more shows I think.
What is the ultimate feeling you’d like people to have when they are listening to Narrow
Stairs, and your music in general?
Drummer: Hopefully they just hear four guys in a room making music. Also the feeling that they can somehow fit the
narration into their lives, that they aren’t alone, that maybe there is something going on in their lives that someone else is experiencing also.
CW: I always sort of hope that there’s like a cinematic arc to the record. That you can pick out favourite songs and you can listen to those individually, but also
that if you have the time to give forty-five minutes to it, then it can take you from one place to another, and that there’s a real arc to it. Like, it’s not just eleven songs, but actually it also
works together.
Drummer: We’ve always approached records like that. So many people will be familiar with a band because of one song. We still like to pack all those things together
and sequence everything and the way it flows, so that it is one entire piece.
You’re playing at Latitude Festival this year. What is the difference between playing at
a festival and playing your own headline show?
CW: The festival mentality from a band perspective is you just have to set for stun and you have to roll with the punches.
Like you just have to make it happen. You’re not in control of very many of any of the variables, and you just kind of do you thing the best you can do it. Where as a headline show there is lots of
prep, we have a full six or seven hours of set up, the crew can go through everything, it’s indoors…!
Drummer: I’m sure though that none of these things are the things that people who buy tickets for festivals are bothered about. Like, when you ask what is the
biggest difference… you may have an incredibly positive view of ‘oh I get to see all these bands and I get to hang out outside with all my friends’. But the logistics are something that we
immediately raise eyebrows towards. And there is a different mentality that anything could happen, that you just have to get on stage and kill it.
Do you prefer festivals or smaller venues?
Drummer: I would rather play our own show, any size, over a festival. Whether it’s a small, medium or large venue. Some of
the large venues can be fun and some of them can be a drag. But a festival is super fun if you’ve got a great line-up of all your friends and favourite bands where you wouldn’t normally get a chance
to see them.
All your videos and photographs and visuals are really interesting and of a certain
quality. Do you have a lot of input into that?
CW: Well the Directions DVD was the brainchild of Nick and Aron Stuart. Aron co-directed the I Will Possess Your Heart
video. That turned out to be a really great project. It was certainly something we’d never done before, and it seemed like something nobody had done before very successfully. And then as far as
artwork goes, we’ve always been really hands-on with artwork, yeah.
Do you think it is important for a band to have involvement with that sort of
thing?
CW: I think it is important for a band to have involvement in it if the band is good at it. Like with artwork, I think if
you’re not actually generating artwork yourself I think you can strangle it to death. And I think we’ve done that on a couple of occasions, been so particular about what we don’t want, that almost
nothing happens. It’s really easy to do that and it’s something we’re trying to avoid.
Drummer: That’s what we did with the Directions project, was to just let people have the freedom to carry out their vision.
CW: Yeah, like understanding we’re in a rock band and we need to make music and just have input into that stuff. It’s more kind of trying to partner with the right
people. Like just finding somebody who you can turn over a project to in the same way that we would turn over a performance or a recording to one another. I think that’s really important. And I thin
that with this record, the girl who did the artwork was just amazing. She was so responsive, so fast with everything.
Did you choose the directors for the Directions DVD yourself?
Drummer: We received tonnes and tonnes of treatments, and we narrowed it down to the ones we liked the most, and then Aron
Stuart and Nick co-produced the whole project and made sure the rest of us were comfortable with how the videos we going to be. But also knew that when we said ‘sounds good’ that when they turned it
in, it was done, there wasn’t any going back.
If Ben writes lyrics about a certain memory, like Styrophone Plates, you can feel the
anger. Is that something you intentionally try to put in to the music?
CW: I think there’s places where we do that and I think it really works. I think sometimes it can really play to the
song’s strengths. Other times if you are too overt about it, it can turn the song into a cartoon of itself. The best example I think on the new record is You Can Do Better Than Me. Like, if the music
matched that lyric, it would be completely ridiculous. I mean, the lyric is so over the top, it is so morbidly, humourously depressing. So to play into that would just give it totally the wrong thing
I think. Whereas with something like The Ice Is Getting Thinner, I think playing into that is a really good thing to do. It’s just different from song to song. You sort of have to gauge the gravity
of the lyric and the melody and the presentation of it and sort of move from there.
Death Cab has gone through a lot of changes over the years and gained a lot of success.
Do you play music now for the same reason as you did when you first started?
Drummer: I think exactly the same reason. I think that’s why we continue to make music and have fun making records and
challenge ourselves in different ways. It still feels like it’s the first time. We aren’t writing songs or producing records with a check list of expectations. It’s not like ‘three singles – check.
Big production – check. Hooks, choruses – check’… there’s nothing like that, we do it for ourselves just like we did at the beginning.
Why do you make music?
CW: I make music because I like making music. It’s really simple. Sometimes I like to make music, and sometimes I have to
make music. I mean ‘have to’ as in internally, it’s that thing that’s there, that drive. I think it’s so many creative things, there’s always something driving you to try and reach something you
haven’t reached before. Not in a success kind of way, but in a creative perfection kind of way.
Drummer: It’s like anything, the more you do it, the better you get at it. The more Ben writes songs the better he gets at it, the more Chris produces records the
better he gets at it, and the more we play live as a band the better we get at it. So that constant sense of discovery and challenge I think also keeps us going.
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