Where Death Cab for Cutie learned to put the pain

Ben Gibbard remembers precocious 2023 arsenic a clip of competing realities.

Onstage, the frontman of Death Cab for Cutie and the Postal Service was thriving arsenic his 2 bands toured unneurotic to people the 20th anniversaries of Death Cab’s “Transatlanticism” and the Postal Service’s “Give Up.”

Behind the scenes, Gibbard’s idiosyncratic beingness was successful shambles.

“I was getting disconnected telephone calls — precise hard telephone calls — 20 minutes earlier going connected successful an arena,” helium says. The vocalist and his wife, lensman Rachel Demy, were successful the mediate of an agonizing breakup that would yet pb to divorce. Yet audiences successful the thousands were turning up nightly to spot Gibbard reanimate the peak-millennial classics that made him 1 of indie rock’s defining stars.

“I’d conscionable archer myself, You’re a nonrecreational — you’re gonna spell retired determination and bash it, and nary one’s gonna know,” helium recalls. “It was each waiting for maine erstwhile I got offstage, of course. But for 2 hours I was capable to disconnect and beryllium a performer, which was incredibly …” Gibbard, 49, trails disconnected into a laugh.

“I don’t cognize if it was healthy,” helium says. “But it was helpful.”

Two and a fractional years later, that split-screen acquisition — “this thought of however we compartmentalize our symptom oregon our grief oregon our trauma,” arsenic Gibbard puts it present — forms a done enactment of Death Cab’s ruminative caller album, “I Built You a Tower.” Due Friday from Anti Records, wherever the radical landed aft leaving its longtime location of Atlantic amid a firm shake-up, the LP sets thoughts of breached fences and never-ending storms against tuneful arrangements that tin churn, shimmer oregon chime.

“I pledge myself to your misery / I kneel astatine its throne,” Gibbard sings successful his still-boyish tenor implicit the sleek caller question groove of “Trap Door,” “Respecting your proclivity / To languish connected your own.” In the fuzzed-out “Envy the Birds,” the frontman recounts an statement betwixt 2 lovers “spraying bullets of grievances”; the driving “Riptides” is narrated by a feline “too bushed to extremity the war.”

“This grounds is decidedly the effect of a divorce,” Gibbard says plainly during a caller sojourn to Los Angeles from his location successful Seattle. “But I didn’t privation to marque a score-settling grounds oregon an aggravated record. This wasn’t an accidental to defame idiosyncratic oregon marque this astir however I’d been wronged. People drift isolated — relationships don’t work. And I deliberation however that’s affected maine astatine astir 50 is simply a precise antithetic mindset than I recovered myself successful erstwhile I was 33 oregon immoderate the past clip it happened.”

Gibbard means his archetypal divorce, successful 2012, from the histrion and vocalist Zooey Deschanel — a divided that inspired Death Cab’s 2015 medium “Kintsugi,” connected which 1 opus asks, “Was I successful your mode erstwhile the cameras turned to look you?” and different chides an unnamed celebrity: “You’ll ne'er person to perceive the connection ‘no’ if you support each your friends connected the payroll.”

“There’s immoderate gnarly worldly connected that record,” says Gibbard, who’d moved to L.A. to beryllium with Deschanel past promptly near arsenic soon arsenic their matrimony collapsed. “It’s not precisely a benignant album.”

Bassist Nick Harmer, who formed Death Cab with Gibbard successful the precocious ’90s aft the 2 met arsenic students astatine Western Washington University, agrees that “I Built You a Tower” represents a displacement successful perspective. “There’s truthful overmuch much self-examination — and truthful overmuch much self-indictment,” helium says. (Death Cab’s different members are drummer Jason McGerr, guitarist Dave Depper and keyboardist Zac Rae.)

Which isn’t to accidental that Gibbard wholly resists placing blame. In “Trap Door” helium sings astir “a trap doorway successful your bosom and a fastener connected your table well-worn from being pressed.”

The frontman says that successful caller years he’d “tried to get distant from utilizing the connection ‘heart’ due to the fact that that had been a touchstone for truthful galore of our aboriginal records.” Yet this enactment seemed worthy holding onto erstwhile it came to him.

“I Googled it to see: Did I already constitute this?” helium says, laughing. “Or is determination a precise fashionable opus called ‘There’s a Trap Door successful Your Heart,’ and present I’m conscionable rewriting it? We’ve made a batch of songs astatine this constituent — you gotta cheque your work.”

Indeed, “I Built You a Tower” is Death Cab’s 11th workplace LP. After the band’s erstwhile album, 2022’s “Asphalt Meadows,” fulfilled its woody with Atlantic, Death Cab reupped with the large statement for 1 much record, Gibbard says, based connected its beardown narration with the company’s then-CEO, Julie Greenwald.

“Julie was our shepherd and our protector the full clip we were there,” the vocalist says of Death Cab’s astir two-decade tally astatine Atlantic, which began with 2005’s Grammy-nominated “Plans.” Yet conscionable days aft they reached an statement for “Tower,” Greenwald was fired and replaced by a caller leader, Elliot Grainge, astir whom the set felt little than optimistic.

Ben Gibbard

(Cielito Mercado Vivas / For The Times)

“We weren’t fixed the content that Elliot had spent a batch of clip with ‘Transatlanticism’ successful college,” Gibbard says of the 32-year-old exec, who made his sanction signing rappers similar Ice Spice and Trippie Redd. With Greenwald’s help, Gibbard says, Death Cab negotiated an exit from Atlantic with ownership of the caller album.

Did Grainge effort to transportation the set to stay?

“Never heard a word,” Gibbard says.

In an email, Grainge (whose begetter is Universal Music Group Chairman and Chief Executive Lucian Grange) said that Death Cab’s euphony “has meant a large deal” to him.

“Working unneurotic whitethorn not person been successful the cards for us; however, that does not lessen my enthusiasm for the band,” helium wrote. “They person delivered an awesome assemblage of enactment implicit their decades-long career, and I americium looking guardant to their caller music.”

Death Cab’s Harmer says helium and his bandmates “talked for fractional a beat” astir putting retired “Tower” connected their ain earlier reasoning amended of the idea.

“We’re not businesspeople,” Gibbard says. “Music is the lone happening we cognize however to do.”

At a friend’s wedding successful 2024, the frontman had been seated adjacent to the instrumentalist Allison Crutchfield, who was past heading up Anti’s A&R department; aboriginal this year, Death Cab announced that it had signed to the indie label, whose different acts see Fleet Foxes and Madi Diaz.

This summer, the set volition circuit down “I Built You a Tower,” including 2 shows successful August astatine L.A.’s Greek Theatre. After the “Transatlanticism”/”Give Up” day outing — not to notation a consequent circuit connected which the radical looked backmost astatine “Plans” — Gibbard is “very acceptable to play immoderate caller material,” helium says.

Doing the hits was fun. “But astatine a definite point,” helium adds, “it’s truly astir moving ahead.”