Reaffirming that Neil Young really does have a "Heart of Gold," the venerable singer/songwriter will once again headline the 2008 Bridge School Benefit concert, in honor of the California school he co-founded to provide assistance for children with severe physical and speech impairments.
As previously reported, Merge records is celebrating its first 20 years with a uber-special box set, released in 14 special editions and curated by some special musically inclined guests. Already announced? The currently guitar-less Peter Buck (of R.E.M.) and Junebug director Phil Morrison. Think that's exciting? Just wait until you hear who else the indie label has on the dock for your listening pleasure.
The Democratic National Convention kicked off last night in Denver, Colo. with a tribute to Ted Kennedy and a heartwarming speech from Michelle Obama. All well and good, mind you, but it's the four-day bonanza of musicians set to perform that boggles the mind. While music has been prevalent in campaigns for the last few decades, Barack Obama and the DNC take the cake with a truckload of inspiring and interesting choices for this year's convention.
In the fall, legendary rocker Neil Young will begin a North American tour toting two of alternative rock’s biggest, most college-y names. Death Cab for Cutie will play at the first concert Oct. 14 in St. Paul, Minn, and Wilco will take over the opening act during the second half of the circuit, beginning Nov. 29 in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Los Angeles indie rock trio Everest joins the powerhouse playbill on every date of the tour.
Despite the quotes coming from Chuck Palahniuk himself, Radiohead won't be
contributing a previously unreleased song to the Choke soundtrack.
In his cover-story essay for Paste back in May, Death Cab For Cutie's Ben Gibbard mulled over Kerouac's On The Road. "I thought," Gibbard wrote then, "'that’s the way, that’s the ideal life, that’s great. You get in a car and you drive and you see your friends and you end up in a city for a night and you go out drinking and you catch up and you share these really intense experiences. And then you’re on the road and you’re doing it again.'"
With this being an election year and all, we are surrounded by obvious intersections between music and politics, but let’s not forget about other musical mishmashes, like the one between, say, bands and pretty, pretty artwork.
Vote in PasteMagazine.com's latest poll...
Maybe you've heard of a little ol' "four-day, multi-stage camping festival held on a 700-acre farm in Manchester, Tenn." called Bonnaroo. We went, saw and conquered the damn thing and have a neat little video to show for it.
The early hours of Day 2 were less than stellar, but not for lack of talent. To quote the legendary Milli Vanilli, "Blame it on the rain." Although the drops fell for much of the first part of the day, the music played on, ultimately winning out over the weather.
Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard still inspired
A gift for melody—as a songwriter and/or singer—can be both a blessing and a curse. A blessing because there are few pleasures in pop music more satisfying. A curse because such pleasure can so easily lapse into maudlin sentimentality. Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard has this gift, and on the band’s new album, Narrow Stairs, he seeks ways to enjoy melody’s gratification while warding off its schmaltz.
The album opens with producer Chris Walla’s nervous electric-guitar strum and Gibbard’s high tenor warbling fetchingly about hiking beneath the “Bixby Canyon Bridge” in Big Sur. When he sings about hoping to hear the ghost of someone whose “soul had died” there (maybe Jack Kerouac, whose nightmarish novel, Big Sur, was based on events in that canyon), Gibbard’s song teeters on the edge of mawkishness.
It pulls back, however, when the singer realizes he’s not hearing any ghosts, just the babble of the creek and the whistle of the wind. “I cursed myself for being surprised,” he confesses, “that this didn’t play like it did in my mind,” and with that, the quiet, melodic vocal is suddenly assaulted by a stomping, hard-rock riff as if a dreamer has been knocked upside the head by the two-by-four of reality. The melody doesn’t disappear, but now it has to fight to be heard.
There are similar confrontations between pretty tunes and distorted noise, between romantic feelings and harsh consequences throughout the disc. Few tunes are prettier than “No Sunlight,” which begins with a McCartneyesque lilt over a charming guitar arpeggio as Gibbard sings of lying in the grass beneath a blue sky as a young man. In subsequent verses, however, he describes clouds slowly filling the sky, blotting out that early innocence. As he does, weird guitar effects begin swirling around the melody and eventually pull the original optimism down a hole of feedback.
“Cath …” recycles the old showbiz trope of watching a once-wild ex-lover marry someone stolid and boring (cf. George Cukor’s The Philadelphia Story and Elvis Costello’s “Allison”). In the Death Cab version, a punchy, bottom-heavy beat backs the vengefulness of Gibbard’s description of the bride—unable to “relax with his hands on the small of her back / And as the flash bulbs burst, she holds a smile / Like someone would hold a crying child.”
When the bridge arrives after the second verse, the bristling guitar chords and booming bass are replaced by lovely guitar, and the bitter accusations give way to a quiet admission of sympathy: “You said your vows and you closed the door / On so many men who would have loved you more.” It’s clear that the singer is one of those men, and when the lacerating guitars return, they slash at him as much as her. It’s the kind of sobering catharsis you’ll never hear from Coldplay, but it’s also the kind of clearly articulated narrative you’ll never hear from Radiohead.
Gibbard is at his best when he tethers his catchy tunes to lyrics grounded in specifics—a creek beneath a Big Sur bridge, the receiving line at a wedding, a closet full of clothes that “hang like ghosts of the people I’ve been,” an old friend so disillusioned by romance that he or she tosses out the old queen-size mattress and replaces it with “Your New Twin Size Bed.” He runs into trouble when he starts singing lyrics as abstract and vague as those in “Pity and Fear,” “The Ice Is Getting Thinner” and “I Will Possess Your Heart.” When there’s nothing specific to pull him back to earth, his words drift off into cliché; the band’s pretty-versus-harsh arrangements seem merely clever, and the hooks get orphaned. And because the harmonies aren’t all that sophisticated, they can’t pick up the slack.
But when Gibbard gets out of his own head, the confrontation between his tuneful optimism and the real world can yield an exhilarating dramatic tension. This is most obvious on “Grapevine Fires,” which begins with a terrific push-and-pull drum pattern, chiming electric piano and a vivid description of fire racing through coastal vineyards. When Gibbard suggests that it’s only a matter of time “before we all burn” in some ecological catastrophe, he suffuses that phrase in sunny California harmonies.
He takes his girlfriend and her daughter to a cemetery to watch the nearby fires, and the listener might worry that he’s proposing a form of domestic escapism. But he makes no effort to deny the threat of possible “end days”; it could very well all turn out badly, he admits. But he also refuses to deny the very real pleasures of a lover and a child. Death Cab for Cutie juxtaposes these two truths the same way it conjoins the intoxicating melodies with distorted guitars, seething synths and metal-funk bass, achieving a balance of pleasure and frustration that closely resembles the world in which we live.
Death Cab for Cutie will be hitting the road for an international tour in May, only days before the release of the band’s latest album Narrow Stairs May 13 on Atlantic.
Frontman Ben Gibbard and bandmates Chris Walla, Nick Harmer and Jason McGerr have added tons of U.S. dates since their original tour announcement last month. The band will kick off its summer tour May 6 in London, before traveling back to the U.S. for two months, and then on to the U.K. and Japan.
Narrow Stairs is sure to be one of Death Cab’s most personal albums yet. In his essay “The Meaning of Life” (Paste’s May cover story), Gibbard wrote of the new album, “With this record, if I didn’t have something to write about that I’ve experienced, if I couldn’t visualize myself in that scenario and really put myself in the shoes of the narrator, then I felt I shouldn’t be writing it. I’m having my own experience here, and I’m writing about it.”
Anxious for a preview of Narrow Stairs? You can stream the album’s first single “I Will Possess Your Heart” here, courtesy of Atlantic Records. Two additional songs from the album, “Cath” and “Talking Bird,” are available for download on Daytrotter.com.
Dates:
May
6 - London, England @ Electric Ballroom
9 - Providence, R.I. - Providence Piers
10 - Boston, Mass. @ Bank of America Pavilion
24 - Bend, Ore. @ Les Schwab Amphitheater
25 - George, Wash. @ The Gorge (Sasquatch!)
26 - Lehi, Utah @ Thanksgiving Point
28 - Morrison, Colo. @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
30 - Kansas City, Mo. @ City Market
31 - Columbia, Mo. @ Ninth Street Summerfest
June
2 - Minneapolis, Minn. @ Orpheum Theatre
3 - Chicago, Ill. @ Millennium Park Pritzker Pavilion
4 - Detroit, Mich. @ Fox Theatre
6 - Montreal, Quebec @ Jacques Cartier Pier
7 - Toronto, Ontario @ Olympic Island
9 - Columbia, Md. @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
10 - Brooklyn, N.Y. @ McCarren Park Pool
12 - Philadelphia, Pa. @ Mann Center for the Performing Arts
13 - Cleveland, Ohio @ Plain Dealer Pavilion
14 - Indianapolis, Ind. @ The Lawn at White River State
15 - Manchester, Tenn. @ Bonnaroo
17 - Grand Prairie, Texas @ Nokia Theatre
19 - Mesa, Ariz. @ Mesa Amphitheatre
20 - San Diego, Calif. @ SDSU Open Air Theatre
21 - Berkley, Calif. @ Greek Theatre
23 - Los Angeles, Calif. @ Nokia Theatre
24 - Santa Barbara, Calif. @ Santa Barbara Bowl
July
3 - Kristiansand, Norway @ Quart Festival
5 - Arvika, Sweden @ Arvikafestivalen
7 - Paris, France @ Alhambra
8 - Antwerp, Belgium @ Riverenhof
9 - Cologne, Germany @ Live Music Hall
10 - Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Melkweg
11 - Berlin, Germany @ Kesselhaus
12 - Hamburg, Germany @ Grosse Freiheit 36
15 - Birmingham, England @ Academy
16 - Manchester, England @ Ardwick Green
17 - London, England @ Brixton Academy
17-20 - Benicassim, Spain @ Benicassim Festival
27 - Pemberton, British Columbia @ Pemberton Festival
August
9 - Tokyo, Japan @ Summer Sonic Festival
10 - Osaka, Japan @ Summer Sonic Festival
Related links:
DeathCabForCutie.com
Death Cab for Cutie on MySpace
Feature: The Hardest Working Band in Show Biz
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
Late last summer, Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard retreated to the rustic California town of Big Sur to write songs for his band’s new record, and to commune with the spirit of his idol Jack Kerouac, who’d visited Big Sur almost a half-century ago. For this essay, we sent Gibbard back to his cabin in the woods to meditate on life, art and solitude.
Why did I think I was going to come here and have this place change my life? I wanted it so badly, as I’m sure Kerouac did. I wanted to cleanse myself with this place. I’d spent years wondering what it looked like, wondering what it would be like to be here. And now here I am, sleeping in the same room Kerouac slept in. I’m walking the same path he walked when he came to the beach and wrote. Jack Kerouac sat here and wrote poems about the sound of the ocean. He sat right here.
There’s something ominous about venturing into this canyon. The first line of the first song I wrote here is, “I descended a dusty gravel ridge”—it’s like the whole album is a descent. Being here for two weeks was productive, but it was also very reflective in a not-so-comfortable way. I realized some things about myself that I don’t really like, and to come back here and be reminded of all that made me feel really anxious from the moment I first turned down the driveway. The epiphany never came. I’m just as confused now as I was when I got here six months ago. And when I returned to start thinking about this essay, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to be back.
I’d totally idealized what I’d be able to accomplish down here. I thought I needed to go somewhere to finish this record, figuring it wasn’t something I could do from the comfort of my own home, like the other 30 songs I wrote. I wanted isolation, which in a way is odd. It’s not like I have a drug problem, or I have a hard time concentrating, or I’m lazy. I idealized coming here for sentimental reasons.
I read On The Road in college. I was 18 or 19, and I had a particular quarter where I was taking biology, calculus and physics. Those were my three classes. It wasn’t a well-rounded schedule at all. It was hard, hard work, all the time-—hours and hours and hours of homework. My brain was just full of all these specific equations; there was no fun whatsoever. But I pulled On The Road off the shelf and found myself reading it between classes, and at that time in my life it was exactly what I craved, exactly what I needed to hear. I thought, “That’s the way, that’s the ideal life, that’s great. You get in a car and you drive and you see your friends and you end up in a city for a night and you go out drinking and you catch up and you share these really intense experiences. And then you’re on the road and you’re doing it again.” The romance of the road, particularly from Kerouac’s work, encapsulated how I wanted to live. I found a way to do it by being a musician, which is what I always wanted to be. The traveling and the being on tour and being away from home set a precedent for me where I thought, “Oh yeah, this is how it works.”
But then in reading Big Sur, it’s the end of the road. You end up with a series of failed relationships and you end up being an alcoholic and in your late 30s, and not having any kind of real grip on the lives of the people around you. That’s the potential other end of the spectrum when you’re never tied to anybody or anything. I run the risk of losing touch with the people in my life that mean the most to me because I have made the decision to live like this.
If you tell certain people that you like Kerouac, they assume that’s all you read, like you don’t know anything else about literature. I recognize all the things that people dislike about the way he writes—his tone and the sentimentality of it all. But those books were there for me at a very important point in my life.
And moments in Big Sur are starting to become very analogous to my life, where I show up in a town and call up my friends, and I’m like, “Guys, we gotta go out. Let’s hang out, I haven’t seen you in forever.” And their response is “Yeah, well, our baby needs to be going to sleep and I can’t be out all hours of the night anymore. It’s time to move on in our lives into another phase; we can’t live in this perpetual adolescence forever.”
Because of my age and what I do for a living and the amount of time that I’ve spent away from my family and loved ones, I’m starting to relate more to the late-period Kerouac stuff in the way that I once related to the fun and excitement of the early material. There’s a darkness inside of me that I’m only now starting to come to grips with and accept. And it’s starting to scare me.
At some point I thought that, as I got older, I’d come to terms with a lot of things. I’d solve some big problems, and eventually I’d become content. It’s almost more depressing to think that the older you get, the more your problems multiply. When I’m old, I’d like to wake up in the morning and not really do anything—just be happy to exist. I’d like to look at my accomplishments and sit back and revel in my own achievement. But I don’t think that’ll ever happen.
Before I made a living playing music, I used to work shitty job after shitty job and think “Man, as soon as I’m able to make a living in music, it’s really going to come together then, it’s really going be amazing.” I remember hoping there’d be 10 people at a show in 1998 when there was an incredible write-up in the local weekly. I don’t want to go back to that period of being obscure and having nobody know who I am, let alone have to struggle to get people to come to the show. I remember what it was like, and it was shitty.
Since then, Death Cab has become one of those weird cultural fenceposts—people align their tastes on one side or the other. It’s weird when people come up to me, music people, snobby, critical kind of people. It’s almost like they’re confessing to me that they like my band: “I gotta tell ya, I really, really like that new record. I heard the first record, and I kinda thought that was OK, and I kinda tuned out. But your band is really a lot better than people give it credit for.”
Sean Nelson said it best: “No one likes what I like, that’s how I like it.” It’s as though people think, “I’m such an individual that I like things that nobody’s even heard of before. I went out of my way to find music and books and movies that are so obscure that I am an individual, and I am interesting because I like interesting things.” But that’s not true. Liking interesting things doesn’t make you interesting.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be successful and critically acclaimed by everybody who likes the cool things you like. Would I want to go back to our first album? I remember what it was like to have one record out and have there be 10 journalists at these alt-weeklies around the country being like, “This is the greatest band that nobody’s heard of. You have to hear this Death Cab for Cutie record, Something About Airplanes, it is mind-blowing, it’s so good.” And the reality is, no, it’s not. It’s a decent record, but it’s by no means our best record. It’s our first record.
I’d like to think I’m a far better writer now than I was 10 years ago. When I first started the band, and I began writing in the way that has marked the trajectory of how I go about making music now, I was convinced that my writing was wildly descriptive and very dense and interesting, and people were really going to have to chew on this stuff. But now I’ll play a song like “Bend To Squares” and it’s like, “What the fuck am I talking about here? This song makes absolutely no sense.” I would just write what I thought were very profound, dense lyrics. They may be about something in my head, but they don’t translate to being about anything that anybody could understand just listening.
I decided a handful of years ago that I just want to write songs that you can understand as soon as you put the record on. There’s no need to veil what’s happening in the song the way I used to.
My goal as a songwriter now is to simply write some memorable turns of phrase. The reaction I’d like from every song I write is, “Wow, I listen to this song, and it’s about such-and-such, and there’s this lyric in there that’s just awesome.” At the end of the day, that’s what I want.
That’s what I’d like the reaction to be when people hear Narrow Stairs, our new record. The first song, “Bixby Canyon Bridge,” is about something very specific: The first time I came here to Big Sur, I was waiting, I was sitting here waiting for something to happen, to have this epiphany about my life and how it relates to Kerouac, one of my idols, who I have the utmost respect for and who changed my life.
Whenever I finish writing a song, I get that satisfaction of finishing something that nobody’s read or heard yet. And that moment of self-satisfaction is the most valuable type of satisfaction for one’s own work. It’s amazing to have people singing a song back to you on a stage. It’s great to finish recording a song and play it for your friend, and they love it. That feels good. But nothing feels better than when you’ve finished something and you know it’s good, and you know that those other responses will come in time.
I feel that songwriters are held to a different standard than almost any other type of writer—some fans get genuinely upset if I admit that a song that they held close to their heart was not based on actual events in my life. Like “What Sarah Said”: I was never in a waiting room in a hospital waiting for news that somebody was going to die. I’ve been in hospital waiting rooms before, waiting for a doctor’s appointment, and I got a sense of the general vibe of the room—not a joyous place—and I decided to set a song there.
With this record, if I didn’t have something to write about that I’ve experienced, if I couldn’t visualize myself in that scenario and really put myself in the shoes of the narrator, then I felt I shouldn’t be writing it. I’m having my own experience here, and I’m writing about it. I’m not writing a song about Kerouac at Big Sur; I’m writing about myself at Big Sur.
The single on our record is a work of fiction that was inspired by things that happened to some people close to me. It’s called “I Will Possess Your Heart,” and it’s eight-and-a-half minutes long. It’s five minutes of build and then a three-minute song. The song is basically about a stalker. It’s about this nice guy who wants this girl he can’t have, and he believes they’ll be together once she realizes how great he is—he just has to wait it out. That’s the part that makes the song really creepy, the delusion of thinking that they were meant to be together. It’s a really dark song. A lot of the material is about the inevitable disappointment people feel as they move through life, and things don’t feel the way they expect. No experience will ever match up to the idealized version in your mind.
I played a solo show in New York in May, and there was a really nice review in The New York Times. The writer said something that I’ve even co-opted to refer to myself: The thing that some people dislike about my music is the exact thing that other people like about it. The subject matter, the words I choose, the way my voice sounds, the specifics in my writing—those are the kind of things that make some people think, “Oh, I fuckin’ hate that guy.”
Our band is very polarizing. There are people who absolutely can’t stand us, and people who absolutely can’t live without us. I’d rather spark those kind of polar-opposite feelings than have people be indifferent.
Because of this approach, I feel this is a more honest record than anything I’ve made in a long time. Elements of it are kind of embarrassing, but I’m proud of that. I don’t spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself—and if other people like it, that’s great.
I can unequivocally say that I’m so glad we were one of the last bands to break before the Internet got crazy. We actually had some time to develop. I hate hearing people say, “I went and saw this band—everybody’s saying they’re really great—but I went and saw them last night and they weren’t any good live.” You know why they weren’t good? Because they’ve never done more than five shows in a row, and now they’re two weeks into a tour—their first national tour. They don’t know how to get to the shows, they don’t know how to sleep right, they don’t know where to find food. They don’t understand how to make a set list somebody cares about. You can’t blame these bands for not being great yet. We were terrible when we first started playing. Our shows were so fucking boring.
I feel very fortunate that we were able to get in before the Web really took off. But I don’t want to go back to that period where we were literally eating mustard sandwiches in West Texas because we didn’t have money. There was nowhere to get anything vegetarian. And even if there was, we didn’t have any money anyway. I remember being hungry and skinny.
At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder—I wonder if I made the right decision by going to the college that I went to, where I met Nick and Chris and we started this band and my life has become what it’s become. What would’ve happened if I would’ve gone to a different college? What would my life be like?
My first serious adult girlfriend got married three years ago. She and her husband have a child now. I went to the wedding, and I was thinking how great it was, how happy I was to be here. I was happy that she was where she was in her life, and that I was where I was—maybe things do happen for a reason. But for every one of those scenarios where I think things happen for a reason, I find myself regretting decisions that I never really had.
I find it very hard to accept the wonderful things in my life. My life really is great: I do exactly what I want to do for a living, I have a wonderful person to share my life with, I have a great family, I have great friends. But somehow there’s a void. I’m the last person who should be complaining or wondering why I’m perpetually unhappy. I would like to think that my lack of contentment is part of what makes my work the way it is, and for the better.
I would rather make great records than make great relationships. When I’m at odds with myself, I would rather fuck up every relationship I’ve ever been in and write great records. And not because I need a breakup to provide me with material. Not like that.
It’s hard enough having a relationship with one person, but to have a relationship with three other bandmates that you are so intimately tied to and you spend so much time with—and to have that actually work and function—is just astounding. I have been in a band for more than 10 years now. I never thought I’d be doing anything for 10 years straight, let alone a band, and I feel so fortunate for that. I have been allowed for some reason to do that. But it’s even more amazing that we get along better now than we did 10 years ago.
An ex-girlfriend once got upset when I told her that music is the most important thing in my life. It’s more important than anyone else could ever be. I don’t want to be overly dramatic and say it’s the only thing that gets me up and keeps me going. But people in your life come and go. As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I’ve always been able to rely on. So why wouldn’t it be the most important thing in my life?
Styling by Brendan Cannon. Ben Sherman black dress shirt w/black tie; Oliverspencer charcoal w/black trim sportcoat available OdinNewYork.com; Uniqlo dark denim jeans
It's been a couple months full of Death Cab for Cutie news, with the news that their new album had a name and the subsequent release of said album's first single via the magic of the interweb. Now, the band has revealed the album art (see above) and announced a few new dates.
Death Cab will brings its new jams to a city that's possibly near you, if you happen to live in the Northeast, or in Oregon, Colorado, the Mid-Atlantic, Ohio or Texas. Hmmm... After looking at that schedule, it seems Ben Gibbard and Co. should petition for a change in tour venues. That schedule doesn't make much sense. However, don't feel too sorry for the Death Cab boys. After all, Gibbard is probably happy to see civilization again after what he went through for his upcoming Paste cover story.
Curious? Look forward to our May issue.
May
9 - Providence, R.I. @ Providence Piers
10 - Boston, Mass. @ Bank of America Pavilion
24 - Bend, Ore. @ Les Schwab Amphitheater
28 - Morrison, Colo. @ Red Rocks Amphitheatre
June
9 - Columbia, Md. @ Merriweather Post Pavilion
13 - Cleveland, Ohio @ Plain Dealer Pavilion
17 - Grand Prairie, Texas @ Nokia Theatre
Related links:
Paste: Death Cab for Cutie, The Hardest Working Band in Show Biz
DeathCabForCutie.com
Death Cab for Cutie on MySpace
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
Clocking in at an epic eight minutes and 35 seconds, Death Cab for Cutie's new single, “I Will Possess Your Heart,” has been released, and you can stream it here. Somewhat like an extended trailer for a film, the song gives an in-depth preview of Death Cab’s highly anticipated sixth full-length album.
The first half of the single is a lengthy jam, leading to where presumably the radio edited version will begin with Ben Gibbard's vocals. The band is presently in Los Angeles filming the video for the song.
“I hope this album is a bit of a surprise for those out there that think they have us all figured out,” bassist Nick Harmer told NME. “We can’t wait to share these songs with the world.”
As previously reported, Narrow Stairs is set for release on May 13, and was produced and mixed by Chris Walla, who has also produced for Nada Surf, The Thermals and The Decemberists.
Death Cab will appear at a handful of festivals and venues this summer; most recently added were dates at Pemberton Fest, Sasquatch! and at Red Rocks Ampitheatre in Colorado.
Given that the new album's release date is in May, fans might want to keep their eyes peeled for additional press coverage that might be of particular interest to said listeners. Say, in a certain music, film and culture magazine. You know, in May.
Dates:
April
18 - Bremerton, Wash. @ Admiral Theatre*
19 - Eugene, Ore. @ McDonald Theatre*
21 - Arcata, Calif. @ Van Dozer Theatre/Humboldt State University*
22 - Davis, Calif. @ UC Davis-Freeborn Hall*
23 - San Francisco, Calif. @ The Fillmore*
24 - Las Vegas, Nev. @ The Joint at Hard Rock Hotel
26 - Indio, Calif. @ Coachella
May
9 - Providence, R.I. @ Providence Piers
10 - Boston, Mass. @ Bank of America Pavilion
24 - Portland, Ore. @ Les Schwab Theatre
25 - George, Wash. @ Sasquatch!
28 - Morrison, Colo. @ Red Rocks Ampitheatre
June
15 - Manchester, Tenn. @ Bonnaroo
July
27 - Pemberton, British Columbia @ Pemberton Festival
*denotes shows that are already sold out
Related links:
DeathCabForCutie.com
Chris Walla on MySpace
Death Cab on MySpace
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
It's been a a little while since Ted Leo hit the road for a proper tour, but the head Pharmacist is about to do just that. After playing a pair of sold out St. Paddy's Day shows with Dropkick Murphys in Massachusetts, Leo will head overseas to spend April in Ireland, Scotland and England. Must be nice!
Not one to sit around, Leo's been staying busy in the non-touring season. Just the other day, he joined Ben Gibbard and Patton Oswalt (click for videos of, amongst other things, Leo, Gibbard, Oswalt and WFMU's Tom Scharpling covering Abba's "Take a Chance on Me") at Jersey City's WFMU. They were there to help aid the longest running non-commercial free-form radio station in the U.S. via its 50th Anniversary pledge drive. The fundraising marathon runs through Sunday, and those who pledge enough, aside from experiencing the satisfaction of giving to a good cause, get prizes.
But that's not all! We shot Leo an e-mail to see what else is going on in his world at the moment, and he was happy to oblige. He says that he is currently working on new material, but that it probably won't be debuted during the upcoming set of dates. However, the tentative plan is to get into the studio in late spring with the hopes of releasing the follow-up to last year's excellent Living With the Living this fall.
Leo also recently "played some percussion on Kristeen Young's forthcoming record, which will be amazing. The RECORD will be amazing, that is (though, if I can say so, my percussion playing was pretty decent as well)." And just in case you were wondering how Leo feels about the musical stylings of Van Halen, well, "I've finally started to enjoy Van Halen (Van Halen through 1984, that is)," he writes. "Especially 'Little Guitars,' off Diver Down."
If that doesn't fill your Ted Leo quota, we don't know what will. Except, perhaps, the following dates:
March
14 - Dorchester, Mass. @ IBEW Local 103 (solo) *
15 - Lowell, Mass. @ Lowell Memorial Auditorium *
April
13 - Dublin, Ireland @ Crawdaddy
14 - Cork, Ireland @ Cyprus Avenue
15 - Belfast, Northern Ireland @ Auntie Annie's
16 - Glasgow, Scotland @ Beat Club
17 - Leeds, England @ The Cockpit
18 - Nottingham, England @ The Maze
19 - Bristol, England @ Thekla Social
20 - London, England @ Borderline
21 - Leicester, England @ The Charlotte
22 - Brighton, England @ Barfly
* with Dropkick Murphys
Related links:
Review: Living With the Living
TedLeo.com
YouTube: "Since U Been Gone"/"Maps"
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
Having been teased with a tiny glimpse of its upcoming album this past December, Death Cab For Cutie is finally letting on some concrete details regarding the upcoming release. The album, Narrow Stairs, is set to come out May 13, just in time for summer.
Meanwhile, here is another Death Cab teaser: A certain music, film, and culture publication might just be featuring the band in a prominent way that very same month. Rest assured, you won't be able to predict this story. More will be revealed in the months to come.
Narrow Stairs tracklist:
1. Bixby Canyon Bridge
2. I Will Possess Your Heart
3. No Sunlight
4. Cath
5. Talking Bird
6. You Can Do Better Than Me (But I Can't Do Better Than You)
7. Grapevine Fires
8. Your New Twin Size Bed
9. The Remainder
10. Pity and Fear
11. The Ice Is Getting Thinner
Related links:
DeathCabForCutie.com
Paste: Catching Up...With Chris Walla
Paste:Death Cab For Cutie: The Hardest Working Band in Show Biz
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
Last night, Death Cab for a Cutie announced via its MySpace blog that the band's new album, slated for delivery onto the shelves of your favorite local record store (and the Internet, of course) this May, has been christened Narrow Stairs.
Last December, when the then-untitled album's existence was announced to a multitude of obsessive Death Cab fans via the band's official website, not much more was released other than the release date. Paste recently had the opportunity to further discuss the record with Chris Walla, who called it "kind of…damaged."
Damaged or not, Death Cab fans have been champing at the bit since 2005 to get a listen of some new material, and come May, their appetite will finally be satiated.
'Til then:
Related links:
Death Cab on Myspace
Chris Walla on Myspace
DeathCabForCutie.com
Got news tips for Paste? E-mail news@pastemagazine.com.
After years of holding it down as the guitarist and producer for Death Cab for Cutie, not to mention lending his ear to numerous other production endeavors, Chris Walla releases his full-length solo debut, Field Manual, this week. Despite the much-publicized detainment of the hard drive containing the album’s masters at the U.S.-Canada border in October, the record has found its way to shelves via Barsuk. Layered, clear, and alternately ethereal or driving, the record bears the trademark tapestry-of-sound quality found on many of Walla's projects.
