Righting the Ship: A chat with Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard

“I remember being on a call with the rest of the guys, in the depths of the pandemic, and saying, 'I’m never gonna complain again about a Sunday show in some shitty town in middle America'.”

Ben Gibbard has missed us, even if it might have felt as if he never went away. Three years ago this month, as borders closed, businesses shuttered and the world hunkered down, caught in the eye of the COVID-19 storm, he began his ‘Live from Home’ streams; just himself, a guitar and a piano, in his home studio. What began as a way to pass the time and stay connected became both an impressive monument to his oeuvre (he played albums in full, took endless requests and aired covers old and new) and a testament to his everyman likability; he’d take questions, and acknowledge his nervousness at the long pandemic road ahead.

At one point, he talked about a long run he’d gone on through locked down Seattle, stopping along the way at all manner of musical haunts, past and present. You could almost picture him with his nose pressed up against the glass. No longer, though; as he joins us on Zoom for an overdue catchup, he’s in New Orleans, on the second leg of a tour behind Death Cab for Cutie’s best-received record in over a decade, Asphalt Meadows. “I’ve never felt so lucky to be doing this,” he says. “There’s a feeling that playing live is just this thing that rights my ship, and to be going out and playing material from an album that’s resonating with people – a lot of bands our age don’t have that opportunity. We’re grateful.”

Asphalt Meadows is a detailed, thoughtful chronicle of Gibbard’s experience of the last few years, one that speaks with nuance to both the anxieties of the global health crisis (I Don’t Know How I Survive; I Miss Strangers) and to the melancholy of ageing (Foxglove Through the Clearcut; Fragments From the Decade). Now, as the band prepare to cross the pond for the first time in four years for leg three of the tour, they’ve already reinvented the album, having recorded smart new arrangements of every track for an acoustic version.

“I might be biased in saying this, as a songwriter, but I’ve always thought that the best tracks are the ones you can boil down to just a voice and an instrument, and then let the narrative drive the bus,” he says. “I think what people ultimately keep coming back to this band for is the storytelling in the songs. So, we started with the sort of meagre goal of going in and doing an acoustic version of Pepper, which was going to be the next single, and which is pretty sparse anyway, but we went into the studio off the back of six weeks on the road, and we felt like we knew these songs front to back. I’m blessed with four other really musically literate members who were very capable of reinterpreting them.”

New takes on all 11 of Asphalt Meadows’ tracks comprise the acoustic version, from the relatively faithful (Rand McNally) to the radically different (Roman Candles). In addition, there’s a tender cover of the early Low song The Plan, included as a tribute to the late Mimi Parker; the two bands were long-time friends, and Low would have opened for Death Cab in the US last year had Parker’s illness not intervened.

They chose The Plan in part, Gibbard says, because it’s a Parker-led track from The Curtain Hits the Cast, Low’s 1996 third LP and a highly meaningful album to Death Cab, having been recorded in the same studio that would later become the Hall of Justice, where Gibbard would make much of his own masterpiece, Transatlanticism, in 2003. “I’ve been a fan of Low since 1994,” he says. “I went to see Sunny Day Real Estate and Velocity Girl at the OK Hotel in Seattle, this tiny 250-capacity place, and Low were opening. I was 17, and I had no idea who they were, or what I was about to see, because the setup onstage was two little amps and a snare drum and cymbal; like, what is this band going to sound like? And I was completely taken with them. I thought they were the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

“And recording The Plan just sort of reinforced Mimi’s magic, because she would sing these incredibly long-held notes that were so perfect in pitch, with this beautiful vibrato. We played our version a little bit faster than theirs, and I still found hitting those notes so difficult. So, I’ve got even more admiration for her. She was a really unique talent.”

Gibbard has a massive live year in prospect; in the autumn, he’ll pull double duty on a US tour that sees him celebrate the 20th anniversary of both Transatlanticism and The Postal Service’s Give Up. Before then, though, Asphalt Meadows arrives in Europe, with two Scottish shows in the diary. “I’m not just saying this because I’m speaking to a publication based in Edinburgh – Scottish music has had a huge influence on all of us in this band. I think there was always much more of a kinship between the Scottish and American indie rock scenes than there was between the US and London, or whatever.

"The way we defined community within those scenes seems really similar, which is why we’ve always gotten on so well with so many Scottish bands. When I think of the bands from the UK that have been important to me, save for a little dip into Manchester, the overwhelming majority of them are from Scotland." He references Teenage Fanclub, Frightened Rabbit, CHVRCHES.

He goes on to say: “Plus, I’m an American mutt, but my closest familial ties are Scottish. So there’s a nice feeling of there being a tracer of my own history when I’m there.”

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Asphalt Meadows (Acoustic) is released on 10 Mar via Atlantic Records
Death Cab for Cutie play Usher Hall, Edinburgh, 22 Mar; Barrowlands, Glasgow, 23 Mar