Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard describes the band’s latest album, Asphalt Meadows, as “one of the better records that we've ever made.” It released on September 16 of last year, and Death Cab will begin another extensive tour in support of the album later this month.

Later this year, Death Cab — along with one of Gibbard’s former projects, The Postal Service — will embark on a multi-city, co-headlining tour in celebration of the 20th anniversary of both bands’ landmark albums: Transatlanticism and Give Up, respectively.

Gibbard recently connected with The Current Morning Show’s Jill Riley to talk about Asphalt Meadows, as well as to look back on Transatlanticism and Give Up, and to look ahead at their commemoration set to begin this autumn.

Listen to the complete interview using the audio player above, and read a transcript below.

Interview Transcript

Jill Riley: You're listening to The Current. I'm Jill Riley and I have a special guest on the line. Ben Gibbard is with me here on The Current. And we have a lot to talk about. So we should jump in. Ben Gibbard, how are you? 

Ben Gibbard: I am good. How are you?

Jill Riley: I'm doing well! Very energized and excited by the amount of shows and concerts that we just continue to announce here on The Current. And it's usually this time of year, where it feels like there's a little bit of a lull, especially in Minnesota, because I think everybody gets the touring out of the way in the fall to come back in the spring or summer. But yeah, there have been such great shows announced and there's one of them that I do want to talk about. But before we get there, you know, it was just this last fall that you were in Minnesota, touring with Death Cab for Cutie on the Asphalt Meadows tour at Surly Brewing Festival Field. And I just have to ask: Ben, how did it feel to be back out on the road, connecting with people live and in person on a stage? How did it feel to be back out there?

Ben Gibbard: It was such an incredible feeling. You know, this is an oft-told story, but our bass player, Nick Harmer, and I were talking at some point during the pandemic — in the depths of it — and he said to me, "You know, I'll never complain about a Sunday show and fill-in-the-blank, quaternary market on a Sunday, like ever, ever again." I think we I think we've done a fairly good job of not taking what we do for granted, or the connection that we have with an audience for granted. But, you know, it happens from time to time, especially on long, long tours. And I think after the last couple years of not being able to do this thing that we love so much, it really instilled all of us with a sense of just how lucky we are that A) we get to do this at all; B) that we get to do it at this advanced age that we are, we're all at this point. And yeah, that people still care and still want to come to shows. So you know, we're, I think more than ever, we're really trying to put our best foot forward every time we step out.

Jill Riley: Yeah. And it's, you know, I think it's only human nature to get into a routine, and then maybe you start to take things for granted a little bit. But who knew that we were going to have such a big dose of perspective? I think it was more than a dose. But during the pandemic, I remember talking with you, it was early on in the pandemic, and I was making all these phone calls to musicians just all over the country. And recently, I was just listening back to some of that. And I remember talking with you when you had started really kind of embracing, you know, connecting with people through online performances, the live-from-home stuff, but as that went on, obviously, like work started on the 10th record from Death Cab for Cutie, Asphalt Meadows. If you could just tell me, how did that process go? Like, it's not like you guys just got into the same room. I mean, it was a lot of almost like correspondence.

Ben Gibbard: Yeah. So you know, the record started as pretty much every record we've ever made has started, which is just me in this room, or a room, writing songs and uploading them to a Dropbox for guys in the band to checkout and choose their favorites. And then we would go in the studio and make a record. But as the pandemic started to kind of saunter on, deeper into 2020 than I think we initially expected, I kind of suggested to the guys that we try a new method of working on music, as much just to get everybody integrated into the process and give people something to do but also to just focus our creative energies at a time when, you know, the future of the human race was somewhat uncertain. So I came up with this methodology where five days in a traditional work week, and we would choose a random order of the five of us, and each, a person on a Monday — let's say it was Nick — might put a bassline, write a baseline, put it up online. Then on Tuesdays, Zac would pull it down, our keyboard player, he would add some stuff to it, you know, upload it. Wednesday, I would download it, add melody, lyrics, guitar, whatever, put it up, so on and so forth till Friday, when we had some semblance of a piece of music that might resemble a song.

And you know, we had these like pretty strict rules that you had only 24 hours to work on it. But that also, you had complete editorial control when you had that piece of music. So if you didn't like something, you could throw it out. And we got results immediately. You know, we wrote, you know, dozens of songs in this manner. Not all of them were good or releasable. But it certainly added another element to how we were creating music and it got me out of my creative ruts that I might find myself in. I think at the end, it ended up being just a little less or about half of the record kind of was started with that process.

Jill Riley: It sounds really highly collaborative. And then you know, you bring in a producer, John Congleton. Now why was he the choice of a producer? What was it about him that made you go, "Yeah, I want to work with that guy" ?

Ben Gibbard: Well, it was interesting. Initially, we we had gone pretty far down the road with a producer out of the U.K. that was kind of you know, who'd made, an older gentleman who had made a number of our favorite records over the course of our life, and due to the pandemic and some health issues, and just the sheer costs of trying to get to the U.K., we ended up having to pivot somewhat late in the process. And John was somebody that Zac, our keyboard player, had been friends with, worked with on a number of occasions. He has this, you know, uncanny ability to take an idea that you have, and just shoot it off into outer space and make it something even more majestic and weirder than you had initially thought it could ever be.

Jill Riley: I'm talking with Ben Gibbard here on The Current, just talking about the latest record, the 10th studio album, Asphalt Meadows, was there a moment on the record or a certain song where, working with producer John Congleton, where he really surprised you? The one song that I'm really thinking of "Roman Candles," it's very like... it almost reminds me of the kind of like distortion I heard on the Low record, Hey What, now even though that was a different producer, but it was very, like, very fuzzy and very distorted to where I'm like, "Are the are the studio monitors OK in this radio studio?" But I love it, it like really grabbed my attention.

Ben Gibbard: Yeah, and you mentioned that low record that BJ Burton made with Low. That, I mean, that was my favorite record from last year. And obviously, you guys are in Minneapolis, you guys obviously know, and have probably known Mimi and the Low people for a long time, so her passing was incredibly sad and tragic for all of us. But you know, they did leave us with one of the greatest records they've ever made. You know, kind of back to John and "Roman Candles," you know, the demo that I had turned in for that, I thought was pretty abrasive. And I thought that I had kind of really, I was really gonna blow some socks off with this thing. I kind of built it around this loop by the band Faust, just this kind of very, like bom, bom, bom, bom, bom! Just like this, just hitting a floor tom over and over again. And I wanted something without a backbeat, something that just felt really like you were just being punched in the face for like two minutes. I mean, that's a perfect example of a song that we brought into demo that we thought was pretty out there. And John just took it even further than we could have possibly imagined.

Jill Riley: I'm talking with Ben Gibbard here on The Current; Asphalt Meadows, the latest record from Death Cab for Cutie. I'm so glad that you mentioned Mimi Parker, because if I'm not mistaken, you had toured with Low before, right? You had a connection with them before.

Ben Gibbard: Oh, absolutely. They supported us in 2012, I believe. And we did a tour with an eight-piece string section called the Magic Orchestra, and Low supported for a couple of weeks of that tour. Having Low supporting our band didn't seem right to me! Because I had grown up a huge fan of their band. I had first seen them in 1994. They were opening for Sunny Day Real Estate and Velocity Girl at a small venue in Seattle called the OK Hotel. And this was right when Sunny Day Real Estate was starting to ascend. We were teenagers, we got to the show early, right up front. And I remember seeing the setup on stage with like these two little amps and a snare drum and cymbal, and my 17-year-old mind not being able to comprehend what was about to happen. I just saw it and I was like, "What is this band gonna sound like that's coming onstage? They don't even have a kick drum."

And they came out and it was Low touring on, I Could Live In Hope, their first record. And from the first kind of 30 seconds of the song, "Words," that they opened with that night, they immediately became one of my favorite bands. I'd never heard anybody play that slowly or that quietly before. And I mean, I was transfixed. I was a fan for life from that moment. To become acquaintances and tour buddies, and to get to know these people that I grew up admiring as much as I did was a true highlight of my life. You know, so Mimi's passing, she leaves a gaping hole in the community of musicians and fans who loved her and who loved their band, and we need to be keeping Alan and their kids and our thoughts. And I can't imagine what a difficult period this has been for them.

Jill Riley: Yeah. Thank you for for sharing your thoughts on Low and your connection. I mean, that's a longtime connection. My gosh, they, I mean, they were a band for nearly 30 years. Ben Gibbard on the line, and I know I gotta let you go pretty soon here, but before I do, I know that there is a big, big announcement about a tour coming up. And you know, not just finishing the Asphalt Meadows tour, that Death Cab for Cutie, Postal Service — you want to talk about a couple of records that are also touchstones for me, I was doing college radio in 2003 when Transatlanticism came out, when the Postal Service Give Up came out. And so, I was like blown away, Ben, when I saw the announcement of the 20th anniversary tour of both of those records, and that you're going to be doing double duty on the tour. So that's huge! A lot of people are excited about it.

Ben Gibbard: I and we collectively being Death Cab, and Jimmy [Tamborello] and Jenny Lewis from the Postal Service are all very excited. I think that when it comes to kind of choosing a record to kind of do in this fashion, I think that the only record on Death Cab's side that we would feel was worthy of such presentation would be Transatlanticism because of what it meant in the culture of indie rock, what it meant for our band as far as being this landmark, breakthrough record for us. But I also wanted to kind of serve Give Up as well. You know, once we started thinking we were like, "Oh yeah, we could do both these records in one show." I mean, it's literally less music than Death Cab plays in a single show. You know, because I've had some people come up to me and ask, like, "How are you going to do that? Like, that seems like so much work." And it's like, "It's a 40-minute record and a 38-minute record" or whatever, you know? And Death Cab, you know, plays for almost two hours. So the shows will be the albums in order in their entirety. It will not be a show that is like four or five songs from a record and then random catalogue tracks and then, you know, a swap over. I want to very much maintain the integrity of both albums as we perform them.

But it's been 20 years, and I feel so fortunate that people still care about these albums as much as they seem to do. I also think that one of the delicate balances about being an artist is that you want to honor your past while also looking forward and continuing to try to make new things. If I could be so bold, I think Asphalt Meadows is one of the better records that we've ever made, and it seems that people's response to it has been very affirmative. And that gave me even more kind of confidence that we could do a tour like this and not feel like we were just trying to cash in on our past glories, you know? That we still have a lot to say, at least Ddeath Cab does; Postal Service not so much, but Death Cab, you know, has a lot to say. And also I wanted, you know, what most likely we will be the last time that the Postal Service goes out and does something like this.

Jill Riley: Yeah, and it's not as though the Death Cab for Cutie well had dried up three years ago and it's like, "Well, we have nothing else. You know, this is all we have." It's not! You've got a new record, Asphalt Meadows. And you know, Transatlanticism, like you said was, that was a big moment for indie rock. Like there was something happening, there was such a shift happening at that time. So I think it sounds like it's gonna be a lot of fun: Death Cab for Cutie, Postal Service 20th anniversary, Transatlanticism and Give Up, which, time is moving in such a strange way because I feel like I just remember that it was just like, a couple years ago that the 10th anniversary of Give Up —

Ben Gibbard: Yeah, tell me about it!

Jill Riley: It was reissued! It's like, "Wait a minute, hold on a second here!" But it's so much fun to have that feeling of where I was in the year 2003. And so, at the Armory in Minneapolis September 24. Ben, I really appreciate you checking in with The Current, and you know, we continue to be that source where people want to hear Death Cab for Cutie, you know, that you can come here.

Ben Gibbard: We appreciate all the support you guys have given us over the years, and you guys are fighting the good fight, you know, so I always have time for The Current. 

Jill Riley: Excellent, love to hear that. Ben Gibbard, Death Cab for Cutie, here on The Current, and the new rec. We'll play a song from that record.

Credits

Guest - Ben Gibbard
Host - Jill Riley
Producer - Rachel Frances
Digital Producer - Luke Taylor

External Link

Death Cab for Cutie - official site