Death Cab Pulls Us Through The Open Door

Death Cab For Cutie decided to sprinkle a little more joy on their legions of acolytes yesterday with The Open Door, a five-track EP you can pick up here. Or, if you’re the Flinstones type, you can buy the CD version from the Death Cab For Cutie Online Store and watch out the window like a Pavlovian dog for the mailman to come. Either way, it’s an EP worth checking out for any DCFC fan, especially those of their latest album, Narrow Stairs.

The songs, taken from the Stairs sessions, mesh well with the new album. According to DCFC, however, The Open Door shouldn’t be seen a collection of B-sides, but rather songs that “didn’t fit the vibe” on the album- which is a bit like your mom telling you that she doesn’t love you any less than your astronaut brother, even though you’re still living in her basement.

The tracks are strummier than their Narrow Stairs siblings, with the only hint of classic Gibbard riffery coming in the form of EP highlight My Mirror Speaks. Rollicking opener Little Bribes is a fun run through a casino, and where any lesser narrator would be wallowing in boring metaphors, Gibbard’s humorous take on the grown-up playpens is nearly laugh-out-loud funny.  

With the opening line The Eiffel Tower built to smaller scale… the freshest oxygen I’ve ever inhaled… it’s clear that this track was a little too much fun to be included on an album with the likes of Grapevine Fires- although it seems as if it’d serve well as a shorthand accompaniment to the epic builder I Will Possess Your Heart. Every slot machine is a robot amputee waving hello / The people stare into their eyes and feed them little bribes / and then they go, Gibbard sings, in that cleverly endearing way of his that somehow excludes him from cheeseball dismissal.

The only serious misstep on this offering is found in A Diamond And A Tether, a track that could benefit greatly from a 30 percent cut. It meanders too long in a sparse, mid-tempo zone that’s genetically within the Narrow Stairs design but ultimately without gravity. Much the same can be said of I Was Once A Loyal Lover as well. The fuzzed-out guitar and punchy snare drive once the song moves into gear lend themselves to some good energy, but the song is an ultimately forgettable ode to adultery.

My Mirror Speaks has the least in common with DCFC’s preceding LP, which accompanies a return to the band’s more complex and dynamic work from Plans. The song builds on itself, a peaks-and-valleys melody matching the guitar line under a pulsing bass and drum throb. It’s a track to convert the skeptics, and although it’s not a direct fit for Narrow Stairs it would be a formidable selling point for new fans. 

These tracks aren’t anything stylistically new for Death Cab, except perhaps in the original demo version of Talking Bird, which features Gibbard pulling latter-day Vedder duty on the Uke. But there’s strength to be found in this familiarity, because Narrow Stairs hit a sweet spot that The Open Door rubs just a little while longer.

The Open Door
March 31, 2009
Atlantic 

1. Little Bribes
2. A Diamond And A Tether
3. My Mirror Speaks
4. I Was Once A Loyal Lover
5. Talking Bird (Demo)