Guilty Secrets

Right about the time Transatlantanticism came out, I asked my friend Steve to tell me his favorite Death Cab album. As you may have guessed already, Steve thought the first album was great and everything after that was crap. Well maybe that’s saying it too harshly, but it definitely was the perfect indie snob moment. Especially since I happen to know that Steve dragged his wife to see them at the Paramount in Oakland last year, that most comfortable of rock and roll venues, after the major label debut Plans.

But in a lot of ways, Death Cab is the perfect illustration of the Indie Snob Effect, and both Steve and myself would be apt snobs for said illustration. Here you have a band that has steadily gotten more pop over time, while at the same time bridging the gap with the indie world. While it may not be fair to say that Gibbard et al were ever that edgy, the mainstream-ness of Plans took the pop (oops, I almost wrote poop) aspect of their music to new heights.

Which is not to say I didn’t like it. I certainly didn’t listen to it as much as Transatlantacism or the Postal Service, but it made it into quite a few itunes playlists, and I know the songs reasonably well. True story: I’m over at a friend’s house for brunch, sitting on the back patio and “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” is playing, then it becomes clear that we’re actually listening to KFOG. Fuckin’ KFOG! I mean, more power to the guys in Death Cab, they went platinum and made lots of new fans, but what does it mean when I like the same music as them? It’s like what happened when I discovered that another favorite band, Son Volt, actually appeals mostly to frat guys in baseball caps (no offense, frat guys or KFOG listeners).

A quick glance through the recently played list on KALX’s web site shows no evidence of Death Cab. Portishead is there (major label), Neil Diamond’s latest makes an appearance (major label), the Black Keys is there, as well as indie stalwarts like Cat Power, Sun Kil Moon, Iron and Wine, Sufjan Stevens and Lyrics Born. The situation is similar on KUSF’s posted playlists. All this despite the fact that Death Cab’s album is brand spankin’ new, and by all accounts is more muscular than anything they’ve done in a while. Is their indie cachet completely gone?

Look up their review on MTV.com. I can sum it up like this: Death Cab finally grow a pair and stop being such wussies and show us what a great band they actually are. Oh, and they have cojones to release an eight minute single (which Pitchfork describes as a three minute single with five minutes of unrelated intro, not too far from the truth), with video.

Narrow Stairs actually is a really good album, in my humble estimation, but it still triggered my Indie Snob Reflex. On first listen, I had that twinge of uncomfortable-ness in my stomach. “uuuuuuuuuuhhhh, it’s so popppppp.” (of course that’s coupled with the always overbearing earnestness of Mr. Gibbard and his lyrics, which is both good and bad and has always been that way). I actually took it off.

But of course I came back, like a sniveling simp. I cranked it up in the car and pretended I was listening to KFOG. I wanted to hear the grit and from-the-gut feeling I had been reading about. And yes, there’s some cathartic moments, but not nearly as many as you may be led to believe by the conventional press about the album. The guitars are indeed front and center. And, probably most importantly, the songs are distinctly more uptempo than anything on Plans. If anything, it’s more like the Death Cab of old, making Plans the anomaly, not Stairs. And as curveballs go (you know, aside from the eight minute single, this is no big fuck you to their record label), I don’t think Narrow Stairs will avoid being played on KFOG.

Which doesn’t make it inappropriate for the DJs on KALX and other college stations. I mean, they embraced the Postal Service after all. And I refuse to believe that I’m the only one who will keep listening to this record despite it’s mainstream appeal. Probably most of you out there aren’t nearly as conflicted or guilty about as me, and that would obviously be a good thing. Because the Indie Snob Effect is as old as the hills, and I’m sure will continue to keep happening as new bands do their best to change and grow.

The concept of indie is so incredibly twisted these days, too. What you think of as independent is 90% filtered through the major label industry anyway, because only the big moneybags can afford to shoulder the enormous task of distributing CDs to all those stores. I think it’s apparent that Gibbard and Walla and Harmer and McGerr are still doing pretty much what they want, just taking advantage of their increased profile and access to things like the Tonight Show and MTV etc. Which, aside from the aesthetic point of view, is really what “indie” is about, i.e. making your own music and not having to listen to the producers and industry execs.

Oh, and for the record, I did download the April Fools joke version of Narrow Stairs (the one where some guy put the already released “I Will Possess Your Heart” into an album by German band Velveteen and passed it off as Narrow Stairs) and was fooled for about two days. I thought, wow Ben Gibbard is really singing kind of low! Check it out, you can understand why when you hear it, the dude really does sound like Gibbard. So how’s that for indie snob?

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