Album review: Death Cab For Cutie – I Built You A Tower

After six albums on a major label, Death Cab For Cutie’s new full-length – the 11th of the band’s almost three-decade-long career – is being released on an independent. That change seems to have an inspired something of a return to the quintet’s musical roots, too. I Built You A Tower was produced and engineered by legendary indie producer John Congleton and involved just three weeks of sessions.

While sonically it sounds polished and well-constructed – after all, the band have been doing this for long enough now that they’re consummate professionals – there are signs of that approach seeping into the music. Second track Punching The Flowers, for example, is a jittery, anxious indie-rock/emo/punk-inspired tune that shivers with its own nervous tension, while Stone Over Water recalls the more raw, earnest and vulnerable style of their first couple of albums.

The latter in particular is particularly devastating emotional journey, that shows exactly why singer Ben Gibbard is so lauded as a songwriter. It’s not technically emo, but the band’s influence on that (admittedly nebulous) scene, both lyrically and musically, has long been documented, and songs like How Heavenly A State and the delicate, confessional strains of The Flavor Of Metal demonstrate that his incredible ability to capture unsettling emotions like few other people.

‘When I was a kid I lived in fear of razor blades in the candy / And Bloody Mary in the mirror’, he sings on the latter. ‘Now when I taste something sweet the flavor of metal is overwhelming me / And I try to hide from the rain falling inside me again.’ It’s poetic, but not overwrought, and such lines capture the essence of an entire scene that was inspired by this band (as well as by Ben’s more electronic-tinged, short-lived side-project The Postal Service).

There are times, however, as there always are on Death Cab For Cutie albums, when Ben’s voice is a little too wet, too pointedly soppy. That happens on opener Full Of Stars and third track Pep Talk, both of which feel, somewhat ironically, just a little too cutesy to properly deliver the emotions – on this record, largely inspired by a divorce – that they contain.

The songs that do, however, do so without reprieve, like the two title tracks, I Built You A Tower (a) and I Built You A Tower (b). Full of self-reproach and regret, the former sets up the debilitating fall that then occurs in the latter, which closes the record in a snarl of bitter melancholy and emotional fatigue. It’s Death Cab at their brooding, beautiful best. While not every track hits that hard, this is still a worthy addition to the band’s catalogue of poignant, sorrowful songs.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Jimmy Eat World, Manchester Orchestra, Bright Eyes

I Built You A Tower is out now via ANTI-