Death Cab For Cutie

Death Cab take a great leap forward with Narrow Stairs, combining Ben Gibbard's melodic indie pop songs with the kind of loose, free-wheeling band jams that Wilco are famous for. This one should find the band's cardie-clad converts and older fans embracing top tunes such as "Cath," "No Sunlight" and "Your New Twin Sized Bed." Overall, the sound and feel here is brawnier than before, but Death Cab hasn't gotten any less brainy -- Narrow Stairs is like the last panel of that old comic ad, where the once-scrawny kid has come back to exact revenge on the rap-core bullies.

Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard is the poet of a particular purgatory — the
holding cell in your head that's filled with failed relationships and wrong roads taken. Death
Cab's most memorable songs contain snapshots from its walls: Gibbard has sung about an
incriminating kiss in a photo booth, discovering forgotten pictures of an ex in his glove
compartment, and an especially bleak Kodak moment from a doomed marriage.... More >