Death Cab For Cutie – Asphalt Meadows
The Washington quintet’s tenth album is a reflective collation of calmness and chaos in an ever-changing world
After 25 years, Ben Gibbard and co. are still penning pertinent pages in the indie-rock playbook. On Asphalt Meadows – a sometimes noisy, sometimes harmonious, and always contemplative listen – the band embrace both subtlety and tumult to produce a typically engaging record.
The one-two knockout of opener I Don’t Know How To Survive and Roman Candles present the chaotic existential panic of living on a dying planet through explosive guitars and persistently perky percussion. Gibbard appears ever older and wiser, wistfully reflective on his shifting experiences of life in his 40s and the changing world around him. I Miss Strangers mourns the changing of paths ('These days I miss strangers more than I miss my friends'), Pepper, the loss of precious time ('All that’s left is a version of events favourably framed for the sake of self-defence'), while Here To Forever questions the time remaining ('I can’t help but keep falling in love with bones and ashes').
Asphalt Meadows is characteristically textbook Death Cab – dolloping shimmering guitars atop stomping percussion, as decadent choruses burst through nostalgic lyricism like an uncontainable smile. Their knack for spry, melancholic indie-rock remains unrivalled and makes for yet another memorable release.
Listen to: Roman Candles, Here To Forever, Asphalt Meadows