Death Cab For Cutie - Codes and Keys [Atlantic]

5.5

Death Cab For Cutie has always been an artist I find hard to like. There one of those “seasonal” indie acts that everyone knows. Death Cab has a knack for creating one definitive song that defines the whole album, for 2008’s Narrow Stairs it was the eight minute epic “I Will Possess Your Heart”, for their latest effort Codes and Keys stays less ambitious and stays within a comfort zone of basic instrumentation with pop capabilities that sound too spaced out. In an effect, Death Cab doesn’t expand themselves in anyway and do the same stuff hundreds of traditional indie acts have done before.

Production has always been clean cut for Death Cab; nothing changes for Codes and Keys. In the examination of the way Codes was produced, it’s weak. It sounds fine to a casual listener, but deep down you can feel the space between the different members of Death Cab as if they are all different guys playing stuff that sound like it comes together. “You Are a Tourist” doesn’t bring a satisfying climax that the rest of the song tries and leads us to. That shows the lack of a uniform, cohesive sound that sounds like a band trying to play. Lead singer Ben Gibbard sounds completely apart from the rest of the Death Cab crew by a mile. The vocal manipulations that define Gibbard’s voice on Codes don’t help either.

One of the most musically interesting tracks off Codes that saves the album from being a completely travesty is the woozy electronic “Unobstructed Views” with its heavy layers of keyboard and other ambient drones that makes for the “I Will Possess Your Heart” of Codes. “Unobstructed Views” reminded me of how anti-critical I should be to Death Cab since they’re also a band that is also hard to hate since they have such a cutesy indie feel about them in an immature way. Kind of like that music you liked when you were 13 that you now dislike, but you still have respect for it. That’s what Death Cab is like for me, the pop qualities of Codes aren’t terrible and makes for a light, casual listen for anytime.

Lyrically, Codes like most Death Cab records is almost painful to listen to. They are nice little nonsensical rhymes that make us smile, but really they’re bad. “We are the same/Underneath the sycamore,” the main line of you guessed it “Underneath the Sycamore”. It’s simple casual stuff. I’ve never liked the vocals of Gibbard either, it just sounds so distant from the ultimate picture of Death Cab’s sound.

You probably think I hate Death Cab, I don’t; I guess they’re too generic for me. It’s always hard to be harsh on such a seasonal indie band such as Death Cab, but I really can’t find a definitive greatness about Codes and Keys. Death Cab is a very nice introductory band into the realms of different indie music, but after the introductory stages, they wear on you quickly.