Death Cab for Cutie - Plans

Death Cab For Cutie is one of those bands that graduated from indie to major because they needed it (i've talked about several). It was Ben Gibbard's secondary solo project, it got bigger and he put a full band together, then their 4th album got really big and they were in the position to actually shop around. Plans is a great album because it was the album they were going to make regardless of who actually paid for it. They were also smart enough to completely distrust "corporate economics," and told their real fans to buy it from them online instead of waiting for it to hit wal-mart shelves.

In other words, Death Cab for Cutie did it right. They didn't "sell out" in the way most of us understand that term. They used Atlantic for a label's real purpose, which is to finance the "mainstream" distribution of their own work, the work that built them a real fanbase, a fanbase they cared about and didn't want to abandon. I'm not actually in that fanbase. I liked their radio singles, but i've already mentioned that the mid to late 2000s were well below my tolerance for gas station quality coffee, and i only bought Plans what 4 years ago?

But, i can recognize authenticity even when i don't personally care about the product. It's the 5th Death Cab for Cutie album, and the bells and whistles are just that. Better equipment, smoother mastering, glossier paper for the booklet, still the same band and quality of writing.

I like the morbidity, the melancholy, the downright sadness, but there's no snark to buoy it anymore. There's no fight, no "but it could be better," no hope anymore. You don't get to fly off the tracks like Neutral Milk Hotel. You don't even get the chance to go insane anymore, it all just sucks and then we die.

Don't misunderstand me, this is beautiful musically amazing stuff, but do you hear any hope? All i hear is hope that we might someday have hope again, and my-lanta that's depressing. Maybe generations younger than me find some catharsis in it, but i sure don't. If you've ever wondered what underlying psychosis chooses the album i listen to next, my best explanation is that the kind of day i had just injects an album straight into my subconscious. Nothing actually bad happened to me today, i just woke up with an unrelenting malaise toward the american version of humanity. I know what happy looks like in my imagination, but i'll be damned if i can figure out a way to get anyone else to participate.

I like doom and gloom when it has a funny or sarcastic twist to it, but this is just emotional misery. Plans: what's the point of even making them anymore?

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