Access All Areas.net.au: Hi Jason, How are you? Jason: Good thanks, and yourself? Access All Areas.net.au: Good! Where are you at the moment? Jason: I’m in London.
Access All Areas.net.au: You’re currently on a world tour, how does it feel to be back on the touring circuit after your time away? Jason: If you’d have asked me four weeks ago, I would’ve said we were still working out the mechanics but I feel like we’re a well greased machine right now. We did a bunch of promos in the US for about four weeks, then we did a five week US tour, and we’ve been on this tour in Europe for almost two weeks so I think we’re finally getting our metabolism back, if I can call it that. Things are good!
Access All Areas.net.au: What’s been the fan’s response to your new material? Jason: Fantastic. The first time we went to Germany, Norway or Sweden no one had heard anything, but with this album tour, as soon as you hit the first few notes of a new song and hear people applaud before the song’s even done, it seems to testify that they’re excited about the new material, which helps us feel even better on stage. The reception here has been overwhelming good, there hasn’t been anything that we’ve pulled out of the hat that hasn’t had a reaction so I’m thankful.
Access All Areas.net.au: What’s different about ‘Narrow Stairs’, compared to DCFC’s previous album’s? Jason: Primarily, the way it was recorded is the biggest difference. We tracked the majority of it live, with all four of us playing at the same time. In the past, (guitarist) Chris has been behind the board, playing producer and engineer, it’s made for more broken up, individual performances. This time, we had one of our front of house guys as our engineer, and it allowed Chris to play more guitar and be more involved in it, so the album has the feel of us being on stage, versus individuals in a studio; like one guy trapped in room for five or six hours at a time doing just drums, or just bass, this just came across as a very live, energetic performance and the album sounds like four guys in a room. There’s a lot more guitar on this record, than the previous record, ‘Plans’. It’s a little scrappier, a little more rockin’.
Access All Areas.net.au: Was it more fun recording this way? Jason: Definitely. It’s always fun recording an album because you’re doing something new, you’re trying to break new ground and challenge yourself. When four guys are playing in a room and you’re trying to get an actual take, you can’t be too judgemental on yourself, you’re looking for a collective feeling, in terms of ‘How’d you guys do?’, everyone felt great, and that made the process go by mortally quickly. That’s another big difference with this record too, is how fast the process flew by. It was more labour intensive with ‘Plans’ and this one (‘Narrow Stairs’) we started recording, and then, Boom, it was over with. We wanted to do it all over again because it was so much fun.
Access All Areas.net.au: You came on board in 2002 (DCFC formed in 1997), how did you come to join the band? Jason: I had known the guys since pre-Death Cab For Cutie days. I played in a band with (bassist) Nick before Death Cab started and I stayed in the north-west of the United States. We had a relationship as a rhythm section, and I knew Ben and Chris from playing around town in different bands in a small college town of Bellingham (Washington), so that’s where we met. We remained friends and they asked me on a number of occasions to be involved when they were between drummers during the first two or three records that Death Cab put out, and it just wasn’t the right timing until just before ‘Transatlanticism’ when Nick and I ended up playing together once again and got talking after practice. We agreed it would be a good time to start playing together again as part of Death Cab.
Access All Areas.net.au: Your album ‘Plans’ was nominated for a Grammy. How did you feel when you found out about that? Jason: Pretty taken back. Any of our successes that we have obtained weren’t set out as a goal. We didn’t record ‘Plans’ thinking we’re going to have a hit single, or a platinum selling record, or thinking we’re going to be nominated for a Grammy three times. It just happened and we were taken back and flattered every time. With ‘Narrow Stairs’ debuting at number one it’s first week out, that doesn’t seem obtainable. It seems like that is reserved for 50 Cent or Kanye West, the gigantic hip-hop moguls.
Access All Areas.net.au: Tell me about your recording studio, Two Sticks Audio? Jason: ‘Transatlanticism’ and ‘Plans’ ran into each other so we were on the road for about five years straight, so we knew we were going to take a break after ‘Plans’ before starting ‘Narrow Stairs’. I was looking at 7-9 months off and it would’ve been tough for me to just stop and do nothing so I wanted a new place to practice. My collection of drums is spilling out into my house and from my outdoor shed and it wasn’t enough space so I found an empty warehouse and carved out a bit of a recording spot for myself in it. Once I started working, I kept my head down and went with the momentum and realised it had the potential to be a commercial recording space. I didn’t set out to build studio to build the next Death Cab record there, I just wanted a place to practice, like an office, where other people could also come and record when I was on tour. What it ended up being is a full blown commercial studio and we did the first five weeks of our record there. Since I’ve been gone it’s been steadily busy with bands from the US, UK and Europe that are coming over and discovering that it’s a lot easier flying without gear and make your dollar go further. I have a huge collection of drums there, but there’s also lots of guitars, bass, keyboards and amps, everything you need. It’s my little museum of equipment but it’s also a very respectable, commercial studio for us to do the majority of the Death Cab record there.
Access All Areas.net.au: The band works with animal rights group PETA. Is there one particular issue that stands out to you? Jason: I will say something simple about it because Chris and Ben are the vegetarians and Chris specifically has been a spokesperson for PETA. The main issues for me are animal testing and animal cruelty. For instance, the cattle industry and the way people in the US harvest beef is appalling. In terms of household pets and animals, there is way too much euthanisation going on with animal shelters, the turn around time is very quick in the US. If a dog is picked up on the street, there are not enough people adopting animals, nor is there enough people giving them a chance. There are other places like RESCU houses in the US, where you can adopt animals and they have more chance of finding long term homes. In general, I think animals always get the shaft. We donate ticket sale proceeds to PETA as a band but Chris has more ethical statements to back up the support of PETA than I do.
Access All Areas.net.au: Your upcoming Australian tour is sold out. How does that make you feel? Jason: Pretty crazy seeing as we haven’t been there for about three years. We didn’t shoot for the moon, we didn’t try to play the largest venues in Australia. The idea was to go back, do a test run again, and hopefully come back over there in January/ February for a more extensive tour in front of larger audiences.
Access All Areas.net.au: Do you have a favourite memory of Australia? Jason: I celebrated a birthday in Perth when I turned 30 and that was a big memory because it was a long night! I remember sparklers on top of a chocolate cake and I don’t think I slept until I got on a plane to fly home, and then I slept for 12 hours of the 18 hours flight back to Seattle.
Access All Areas.net.au: What can fans expect at your upcoming Australian shows? Jason: Lots of energy! It’s been a while since we’ve been down there so we’re going to be really excited. We’re going to be fully into an album cycle, which means we will pull out all the stops, we’ll have our tricks down and it’ll be energetic, I promise!
Access All Areas.net.au: Thanks for your time Jason, have a great day!
Interview by Alexandra Hartshorn
Death Cab For Cutie
BIOGRAPHY
When asked to describe Death Cab For Cutie’s sixth studio album, Narrow Stairs, guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Walla characterizes it as “having teeth,” and we can’t think of a more apt summarization of the disc. While many bands in Death Cab For Cutie’s situation would try to recreate the success of hit songs like “Soul Meets Body” or “I Will Follow You Into The Dark,” instead the band have crafted the most ambitious and varied album of their career by simply doing what they’ve been doing since they formed in Bellingham, Washington a decade ago – made a brilliant record that refuses to pander, while stretching the artistic boundaries of what a Death Cab For Cutie record should sound like.
After spending much of 2006 in the midst of a turbulent tour cycle surrounding their RIAA platinum, Grammy-nominated album Plans, the band took a well-deserved break during the first part of 2007. Frontman Ben Gibbard embarked on his first-ever solo tour; guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Walla released a solo album and produced records for acts like Tegan And Sara; drummer Jason McGerr constructed his own recording studio, Two Sticks; and bassist Nick Harmer, as always seems to be the case, worked on various projects. If Plans was a collection of firsts – Death Cab’s first album for a major label; the first disc to feature songwriting contributions from someone other than Gibbard; the first Death Cab disc recorded with the same drummer as the one before – Narrow Stairs feels more like home.
The decision to record the new album at McGerr’s Two Sticks, Walla’s studio Alberta Court, and long-time friend John Vanderslice’s studio Tiny Telephone allowed the band to abandon self-conscious tendencies in order to craft the most creative album of their career. “I wanted more than anything to create a professional studio that was also somewhere that was comfortable to hang out in,” says McGerr about the conception and construction of Two Sticks (which was designed largely with the Narrow Stairs sessions in mind). “To do that, I had to take into account what we all love and hate about the studios we’ve been to, and make it comfortable enough to spend five or six weeks there at a time without feeling homesick.” That environment, combined with the heightened amount of collaboration on the new songs, makes Narrow Stairs the climactic culmination of Death Cab’s first ten years.
While much of this is due to the musical and emotional relationship the current quartet have developed over the last few years of playing, singing, and touring together, it can also be attributed to the environment Narrow Stairs was tracked in. According to Harmer, the album was recorded “with all of us sitting in a room looking at each other,” making the sessions seem more like a typical band practice than a high-budget recording. And listening back to these eleven songs, there’s a level of intimacy that couldn’t have been attained any other way. “There was a lot of talk about what we wanted to accomplish as a rhythm section,” Harmer continues, adding that he took acoustic bass lessons in order to stretch out on the record. “I just wanted to think of my instrument in a different way.”
Recorded entirely on two-inch tape (thus limiting the amount of overdubs), the result is an album that captures Death Cab For Cutie’s live sound – a process that was scary for the band at times. “There’s stuff on this album that makes each of us uncomfortable performance-wise,” explains Walla, adding that the happy accidents – such as tripping over a cable and unplugging Harmer’s bass on “I Will Possess Your Heart” – turned out to be some of his favorite moments on the disc. “We spend an overwhelming amount of time as a band playing live together, so it doesn’t really make sense not to approach our recording the same way,” Gibbard adds. The live feel of the recording not only affected the way the songs were put to tape but also the way they were arranged, making for the band’s most aggressive record to date.
The opening track, “Bixby Canyon Bridge,” is an excellent overreaching metaphor for the sonic scope of Narrow Stairs: The song begins somewhat characteristically, with Gibbard’s singing about “descending a dusty gravel ridge” over an ebbing bed of subdued synthesizers and chiming guitars… but halfway through the track, the song unexpectedly veers into a syncopated drum-and-guitar breakdown aided by Harmer’s low-frequency melody line. These types of aural experiments take the approach of such Plans songs as “What Sarah Said” to dazzling new heights, whether it’s the eight-and-a-half-minute-long first single, “I Will Possess Your Heart,” or the carefree orchestral waltz, “You Can Do Better Than Me.”
“Narrow Stairs was the title Nick came up with, and I think it lends itself to a lot of the lyrical content,” explains Gibbard when asked about some of the themes of the record. “It doesn’t connate descension or ascension – and I think that by giving it some physical limitations in describing it as narrow, it leaves a lot more open to interpretation.” While subtle details like “softly snowing televisions” help the listener paint a vivid mental picture, ultimately the characters are the souls of these songs – whether the protagonist is giving away his Queen-sized bed out of desperation or searching under an abandoned bridge for a non-existent revelation.
Then there’s the aforementioned “You Can Do Better Than Me,” a lingering paean to relationship insecurities that shows how Gibbard has grown as a lyricist. “I think Ben’s lyrics will fall deep into the minds of many who think alike, but can’t find the courage to speak honestly and openly,” explains McGerr. “In other words, if the thought that you’ll never be worthy of a better mate hasn’t passed through your mind at some point in your life, no matter how fleetingly, you’re either lying or unable to articulate it.” While the content of the album is dark at times, Gibbard manages to express his melancholy musings with a sparkling – and sometimes subtle – dose of hopefulness.
“If you can’t stand in place, you can’t tell who’s walking away,” Gibbard croons on Narrow Stairs’ penultimate track, “Pity And Fear” – and while that’s true, Death Cab For Cutie have taken a giant step forward both creatively and conceptually with this album. While it hasn’t been an easy road to get to this point, Death Cab For Cutie insist that more than anything, this next chapter in the band’s evolution is due to the fact that they’re relating both as individuals and band mates. “To think that tension is adding to the music isn’t true for us,” Gibbard explains, citing notoriously at-odds acts like Fleetwood Mac and Metallica. “It’s easier for us to make good music when we’re all relating to each other and getting along.”
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