Eleven years, seven albums and innumerable EP’s in and you have to wonder how big Death Cab could have been if Ben Gibbard was possessed of a slightly more refined quality filter. Capable of breathtaking moments of genius, ‘Translanticism’ anybody?, yet also too easily falling prey to blandness and this has probably held them back from truly global greatness.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan because when Ben and the boys get it right they really get it right, but they are prone to getting it rather mundane too and both sides of the band manifest themselves on ‘Narrow Stairs’.
The album opens with distinctly more vim than that with which it finishes and the first two songs ‘Bixby Canyon Bridge’ and the first single from the album ‘I Will Posses Your Heart’ are the band at their finest. Two slices of wonderfully epic, melodic songsmithery that leave the listener not only longing for more but longing for the band to hit this level more consistently.
However this momentum is not maintained and the song that follows, ‘Grapevine Fires’, is typical of the kind of pedestrian songs that Death Cab can be guilty of. Thus the pattern is set for the next hour or so. Overall they come out with more ticks in the credit column than in the debit, but tracks like ‘Your New Twin Sized Bed’ do not deserve to sit alongside gems like ‘Cath’.
The penultimate song, ‘Pity And Fear’, rescues things to some extent. Tabla and guitar lines entwine around each other and Gibbard’s vocal sneaks in underneath, building to one peak after another, this is most definitely the sound of Death Cab getting it very, very right.
All in all a satisfactory record that has all the necessary ingredients to ensure that this will probably be Death Cab’s most commercially successful venture yet, but I can’t help thinking it could have been so much better.
Top Tracks: ‘I Will Posses Your Heart’, ‘Pity And Fear’, ‘Bixby Canyon Bridge’.
Released 12/05/08 on Warner Records