When some people think of the Seattle rock scene, they can't help but conjure up images of young kids wearing flannel shirts, playing grunge music in a garage, and listening to groups like Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
But at closer look, it's obvious the gloomy, eclectic city has much more to offer the world of rock music as in the case of the quartet Death Cab for Cutie.
Over the past five years, the band - singer/guitarist Benjamin Gibbard, bassist Nicholas Harmer, drummer Jason McGerr and keyboardist/guitarist Christopher Walla - has recorded four full-length albums and established a devoted fanbase.
Its latest, "Transatlanticism," is a work many critics are calling its best thus far and it follows its 2001 record, "The Photo Album."
The work's theme centers around nostalgia and the distance that can separate two people such as a large body of water like the ocean. With the help of a drum machine and various electronic effects, Death Cab for Cutie drives this concept home with sounds that remind the listener of a train running on its tracks, a plane engine coming to a halt or the wind blowing in the distance. These sounds surface sometimes in the middle of a song or in between tracks.
The refreshing aspect of "Transatlanticism" is that each song sounds quite different. With this record, as in past projects, Gibbard submitted a stack of demos to the rest of the group that he recorded alone in San Francisco last year.
Believing the songs possessed more potential in terms of their arrangements, the band began to dissect each track and put it back together collectively.
"There are really only three songs that didn't get completely rearranged," said Walla. "The song 'Sound of Settling,' that was a like a throw-away song, that's how Ben framed it. It came to us as a slow, folk song with guitar and vocal. The first time I heard it I was driving back from San Francisco and all I could think of was the song, 'Walking on Sunshine.' I got really excited about the song being a super pop song. I called Ben, told him I love the song and that it's got to sound like 'Walking on Sunshine.' I think he almost hung up the phone."
Walla expanded upon another song which is the title track of the album. The song begins as a slow, melodic ballad highlighting notes on the piano and guitar that eventually builds in its pacing with additional tones and sounds that include a men's choir singing in the end.
"The basic structure of the song didn't change from when Ben brought it to us," said Walla. "The build, outro part was my idea. It was one of those things that happened in rehearsal where I thought, 'What would happen if we run with it and continue to build on it? I don't know how we do this but let's try it and see what happens.' The first time we played it together with that in mind, it was great. It was one of those creative moments where an idea totally worked."
Death Cab for Cutie recruited new drummer McGerr, who recorded on the album. The group moderated its time in the studio over a year and a half, and split time between two studios: Hall of Justice in Seattle and Tiny Telephone in San Francisco.
"I think this record unfolded pretty well," said Walla, who not only recorded as a band member but also produced the album. "This album was recorded over the course of five months, but it wasn't five months every day. We had the time, which is great because I think it's really critical to be able to do four or five days worth of tracking, then walk away from it and come back to it a week later. With this band, it's about the sixth or seventh consecutive day when we start to second-guess everything we've done."
In the past, the group usually test-drove songs it planned to record in the presence of a live audience, but this album was different in that every song was recorded long before it made its way into a live set.
"I absolutely prefer doing it this way," said Walla. "It's so nice to not get attached to arrangements and sounds before you go into the studio. I think it's really a trap when bands play the songs live. They know the songs really well, but when it comes time to make a change in an arrangement, the band locks up and everybody freezes. We had that problem a lot with 'The Photo Album' because we played so much of that record on stage when it got time to put it on tape it got difficult to break out of those arrangements. This process was so liberating and we are finally at a point where we are all communicating really well and everyone trusts one another musically."
Gibbard details to the mundane or ordinary transform songs like "Title and Registration," which is essentially about a car's glove box, into a heartbroken love song where memories can find their way into the present during those unexpected times.
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