Nice Guys: Death Cab for Cutie

When I speak to Chris Walla, Death Cab for Cutie guitarist and producer, he claims that he has slept in his own bed four times since April. “The travel is burning us out a bit, but doing what we love offsets it.” It’s now more than ten years into his band’s stellar career, and after the emphatically positive reception of this year’s release, Narrow Stairs, and a long string of packed-to-the-rafters shows across the globe supporting the record, it seems now would be the perfect time to look back at Death Cab’s rise and to glimpse forward into the sparkling future.

Indie has been the approach from the very beginning for Death Cab and according to Walla this outlook on music isn’t going to be abandoned anytime soon. “We just want to keep making our own records the way we want, the way we’ve always made them,” he states when quizzed about the indie ideals that his band has championed for over a decade. “To do any of the things that you have to do to be in a position like Coldplay, I don’t think we’re prepared to do a lot of that stuff.” It’s clear what is meant by that comment, but he voluntarily elaborates anyway; “there’s sort of a thing that involves really going for it, with a really specific imaging and marketing campaign. For them it involves, to a degree, those jackets that they’re wearing, which are really nice, but really it’s just a thing.”

It would be easy to downplay this sentiment; a passing comment, a fleeting, if gently vitriolic, jibe. In Death Cab’s case though, it surely wouldn’t be wise to be so quick. Clearly permeating every note of Death Cab's music is the attitude that music needs no gimmicks and no falsities. The band’s musical sincerity is there for all to see in the unashamed, warts-and-all emotional journeys that are their records and it’s likely that this plays a large part in endearing them so wholly to their fans. But how is it that after so long this sincerity remains? “I think that we’re still forever and ever just four guys in a band,” states Walla. “Our biggest challenge is to make records that we would want to listen to; musically and personally we want to challenge and impress each other more than anyone else,” continues Walla, further clarifying that his band is not a means of achieving some external ambition, but truly an end in itself.

“There have been a couple of times on tour where, after ten hours of mind-numbing travel, you end up sitting in some weird room for four or five hours, and you can’t work out why you’re still there and not back at the hotel,” recalls Walla. “And we’ve joked with one another about it, like ‘wow, this must be when bands start doing drugs!’” He chuckles light-heartedly at this comment and in that moment it’s near impossible to conceive of Walla’s personality being more down to earth. There may well be truth to the folklore that Death Cab is the the most genuine band on the planet. Ego is therefore the next topic of discussion. “Keeping your ego in check is definitely a conscious process, but we’re not completely ego-less. I think that would make any band terrible. There has to be something that makes you feel important enough to get up on stage night after night,” says Walla. “But we’re just so thankful to be in a band where we all love each other, and we love what we’re doing, so we don’t ever get ahead of ourselves. We joke that we’re gonna get back from Australia and have to get day jobs, which is ridiculous because everything is totally fine, but we’ve never taken this for granted.”

At this juncture -that is, after a decade together, after releasing a series of critically acclaimed studio albums, including Transatlanticism, Plans and 2008’s Narrow Stairs and after several highly successful world tours- it seems silly not to ask ‘what next?’ On this topic, it is apparent that the Death Cab boys have spent a conversation or two pondering this very question. “We never did this because we wanted world domination,” begins Walla earnestly. “It’s really interesting to try and look at this as something that’s simply sustainable, and not as a growth model.” Death Cab are what Walla refers to as a “career band” and this bodes well for their vast legion of fans. “We’re all healthy and well, and we all like one another. Thankfully we’ve been able to avoid some of the pitfalls that other bands fall into... It feels like we’re gonna be around for a while.” Rest easy Death Cab devotees!

Share this article on Facebook