SEATTLE — A lot has changed over the course of the pandemic, and with live events suspended for a time, some musicians were forced to take up 9-to-5s. The members of Death Cab for Cutie weren't exactly pushing paper while touring was on ice, but the Seattle indie rock kings adopted a structured, Monday-through-Friday work routine more familiar to us normies as they prepped their sterling new album, last month's "Asphalt Meadows."
As a way of rolling with the socially distanced punches, each Monday, a member of the band was charged with creating a new piece of music and passing it on to the next member, who had full creative license to do with it what they pleased, the following day. By the end of the week, all five musicians had 24 hours to put their individual stamps on the piece and a new song for the record (or the scrap heap) was born.
It was a bit of a break from how Death Cab has historically worked, though about half the album started the old-fashioned way, with frontman and principal songwriter Ben Gibbard presenting sketches to the band.
We caught up with bassist Nick Harmer amid Death Cab's current tour — and the Mariners' thrilling (and inevitably soul-crushing) postseason roller coaster — which lands at the Paramount Theatre for a sold-out, two-night homecoming Oct. 26-27. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: I don't know if you're a Mariners fan, but ...
A: Oh my gosh, yes. We were on stage in Charleston, South Carolina, when the Mariners beat the Blue Jays in the second game. We were tracking that game and we watched them go way in the hole. We're like, "Agh, this isn't looking good." Then they started clawing their way back and we had to go on stage. Somebody yelled [the final result] from the crowd, so it was this really great celebration. I'll never forget standing on the stage, "The drought's over! Yes!" I'll also remember being in Detroit, watching them bring Robbie Ray out and just seeing it come in slow motion — "No, don't do it! Don't bring him out!"
Q: On a happier note, congratulations on the album. I understand this time you guys had a different songwriting regimen.
A: It actually was a pandemic necessity. Ben had this idea, in order to stave off going stir-crazy and for us to be able to still connect musically with one another, why don't we try this experimental telephone-style of writing.
It seemed like something fun to try. Pretty quickly we realized we were actually getting some good quality out of the experiment, so we just kept doing it. That few months turned into almost two years of writing like that before we were in to the studio again. I think we're actually going to incorporate it moving forward, because it was really satisfying and it allowed all of us to stretch and grow and try some things that maybe we wouldn't have standing in a room looking at each other and feeling stuff out in real time.
Q: One thing that struck me was a lot of textures or sounds I didn't necessarily equate with the band, but feeling like you pulled them into your world very naturally. It seemed like you were expanding the palette you were working with.
A: Yeah, totally. I give the credit to John Congleton, the producer. He would take these demos and push us and challenge us, and ask us, "Well, what's the point of view of this song? Let's explore some other ways this can sound and see if this song still holds together." A lot of those touches and textures came from John and the things that move him aesthetically. His production added a certain level of sonic cohesion that makes everything feel related and part of the same point of view, which to us, that was the final piece that was needed to bring it all together.
Q: Beyond this different songwriting style, was there anything you wanted to try or experiment with sonically?
A: I don't know if there was a conscious choice toward anything. A lot of it was just us channeling our own feelings of anxiety. There was, collectively, such a traumatic time for everyone in the world going through this moment of what is society going to look like on the other end of all of this? It became a really good conduit for us to work out a lot of the emotional stuff that we had been storing up and processing over the previous years.
This isn't a pandemic record, you know. It was written and conceived and processed during a pandemic, that's certainly the context in which it was created. But I like that at the end we're not left with a record that feels limited in its time and scope. It became bigger than that and I think Ben worked really hard to find that balance between acknowledging the context in which he was emotionally reacting to things, and then pushing forward and looking ahead in terms of what's the bigger thing going on for him.
Q: I wanted to ask about the cover art. It's a really striking image. Can you tell me about the choice?
A: Ben was on a run, he's an avid ultramarathon runner and he was on a training run in San Francisco and he came over this ridge and saw these two nun figures looking out over the city, pulled out his phone took a picture — boop — and he sent it to the band text thread. Immediately, [it] was like, that's an album cover. As the song list came together, the title came at the end and matched well thematically with that particular image. We've never really had a photograph like that on an album cover, ever. It kinda stands out in a way I think is really powerful.
Q: This is your 10th album. A lot of bands don't get to that point in their career. How do you keep it fresh? What keeps the band exciting for you?
A: What started as something really fun in college, just playing music with my friends, has been the thing that I've been trying to maintain. And it hasn't always been easy. I mean, there's a lot of pressure and a lot to navigate as the profile of the band has grown. It sometimes is a struggle to remind yourself that you love doing this on hard days, but overall from a big-picture standpoint, I love my bandmates and I love playing music with them and I just want to keep doing that as long as I can. If there's an audience for that, great. And if not, there wasn't an audience in the very beginning and that was still fun.
Q: You guys were the first band to play Climate Pledge Arena about a year ago this time. What was that experience like and what do you remember about that night?
A: It's exciting. I grew up in Puyallup and would come up and see shows at the Coliseum, KeyArena, all the different names it's gone through. I'll tell you, it was a bit chaotic, that first show. They were still just barely getting the arena ready. I'll never forget walking in, when we were loading in our gear, they were still putting coats of paint on walls and hanging up handrails for the crowd that was soon to be there. We were like, "Whoa, here we go!" For a band from Seattle to play the new big concert space, you gotta pinch yourself. It's a dream. And I don't think it actually occurred to us. We were just getting ready to walk on stage and Ben was like, "You know, technically, we're the first band to play this." [Laughs.] So, there's one for the trivia books.
