Call a Cab, the party's dead

Throughout their career, Death Cab for Cutie has been one of the few bands to garner mainstream attention while keeping a tried fan base loyal.
 
With “Codes and Keys,” the pressure of pleasing expectant new fans and maintaining credibility finally becomes too much. For the first time in their careers, DCFC misses.

Opening the album, “Home Is A Fire” has Ben Gibbard singing over a simple guitar and piano line behind a steady beat, which appropriately sets the tone because it never really gets anywhere.

In the three years since “Narrow Stairs,” Gibbard has not only gotten sober, but also married actress and musician Zooey Deschanel. These two events have predictably spelled the end for Gibbard’s trademark biting cynicism and satire.

“Underneath the Sycamore” and “Stay Young, Go Dancing” are both potential odes to his new bride, while “Some Boys” explores the issue of womanizing, a love-struck Gibbard insisting “Some boys don’t know how to love/ they won’t get what they want.”

“Unobstructed Views” is a ballad, or rather an attempt at one. Much like the title-track from “Transatlantacism,” the song is situated in the middle of the album and initially seems like a chance for Gibbard to croon out another classic.

It quickly fails though, just as soon as Gibbard parts his lips with the opening line “There is no eye in the sky, just our love.” It’s likely Deschannel’s delightfully pasty emo complexion has taken its toll on one of the finest pop-song craftsmen of our generation.

“Doors Unlocked and Open” is an assault on the pressures of modern society. The song’s subject matter is comparable to older hits like “Why You’d Want to Live Here,” but “Doors” is dull and not nearly as catchy.

The best song on the album is “St. Peter’s Cathedral” because of its lyrical content and the subtlety with which the band builds the music around Gibbard’s verses. It culminates in a stadium-filling beat and Gibbard’s trademark existential “beauty-in-the-bleakness” returning for the final line: “When our hearts stop ticking, this is the end/ and there’s nothing past this.”

Unfortunately, there is nothing past this song worth taking from the album.
Death Cab for Cutie seems to have finally run out of steam and clever ways to deliver depressing quips. For “Codes and Keys,” the band has crafted 11 songs that play like B-sides or cuts they decided to keep off of the last two albums, and for good reason.

-By Jake Amrhein