Seattle's Death Cab For Cutie have a habit of talking about their spectacular creative left-turns on upcoming albums. And then...pretty much releasing the same sounding music as they ever have.

Prior to 2009's Narrow Stairs, guitarist Chris Walla told Billboard magazine that the forthcoming album was "weird," "spectacular," a "curve ball", "creepy," as well as adding "I'm really excited about it. It's really got some teeth. [It's] a much less guitar-centric album than we’ve ever made before". Apart from the length of the eleven minute opening number 'I Will Possess Your Heart', Narrow Stairs sounded the same way Death Cab For Cutie always has: propulsive, lightweight indie rock, buoyed by the gentle emoting of frontman Ben Gibbard and the inventive, percussive dynamic of drummer Jeff McGerr. It's a style that spawned a myriad of inventors, but it's also one that the band have found difficult to move on from. When you perfect it on your second album We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes (2000), (opening track, 'Title Track', being the best example - see below) distinctive styles can be a difficult shackle to break).


Death Cab For Cutie - 'Title Track' (2000)

Now on the eve of their seventh album Codes & Keys, the band have been quoted as saying it will be a "much less guitar-centric album than we’ve ever made before". Judging from the band's gimmick video this morning, such claims seem again to be stretching the truth.

At around 9am our time this morning, Death Cab - in a "world's first" - shot and performed a music video for the song 'You Are A Tourist', making it the "first-ever live, scripted, single-take music video to be broadcast as it is filmed". As a gimmick? Good job. As art? Not so much. More a talking point than an accomplished video, the shoot saw the band moving around a light-filled atrium, complete with dancers, computer generated lights and various artifices before downing instruments to applaud all involved.

It's no apocalyptic Melbourne.


READ OUR REVIEW OF DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE - LIVE IN MELBOURNE, 2009
TheVine INTERVIEW WITH DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE'S NICK HARMER

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