- Label
- Atlantic
- Release date
- 12th May 2008
- Genre
- Indie
- Buy this album
- Buy CD
Fighting the good fight against becoming a bland alt rock everyband
There's nothing a proper indie rock band likes less than mainstream commercial success. Death Cab For Cutie got their lucky break not via the now accepted route of MP3 blog love but because they were a character in The OC's favourite band. They must have hated it.
While Plans, their major label debut (how could they?) delivered an album full of easily accessible, warmly produced and slightly quirky bookish pop the follow up is the exact opposite. Single I Will Possess Your Heart, which is an eight minutes long moody groove with the vocals arriving after four long minutes, sets the uncompromising tone perfectly.
Still, Narrow Stairs glimmers, fizzes and bubbles with a strangely majestic tension, melodies take their time to rise to the surface and even the poppiest tracks, like the fab No Sunlight, are about death. An old-fashioned chunky headphones album then, with guitar atmospherics The Edge could relate to and brooding poetic lyrics to please everyone's inner Morrissey.
More to try: Modest Mouse: Good News For People Who Love Bad News Pavement: Brighten The Corners The Decemerists: The Crane Wife Band Of Horses: Cease To Begin
