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.
