The Loop : Death Cab For Cutie - The Photo Album

Death Cab for Cutie - The Photo Album (2001)

Yet another "Oops, I guess I slept through this in High School" band that I didn't start liking until college. As mentioned in my Centro-Matic feature, I even had the gall to leave before they played their set at Marquee in April 2004. Major life FAIL.

I started working at the ASU radio station my Freshman year and after a semester of thinking I "didn't have time" (ha, if I had only met me 3 years later), I decided to take on a DJ shift in the afternoon. Since it was the middle of the year and DJ training had come and gone, the music director Albert (who has since become one of my all-time music gurus) sat with me and taught me the ropes. It was a rule that you had to have two semester's worth of a "rotation shift", which basically meant playing off a pre-chosen playlist as opposed to chosing my own mysic like I did on "The Basement". I sort of miss those days, I discovered a lot of great music because of it.

While I was setting up my playlist, the song "Pictures in an Exhibition" (off Something About Airplanes, which later became my favorite song of their's) showed up and I causally mentioned that I hadn't really gotten into this band. I then shamefully mentioned that I left before their set the Spring before and I was strongly encouraged to give them another chance and to start with The Photo Album.

So I did. I guess it was technically an LP, although not very long but cohesively just as strong. It felt very bass heavy and dark, with the same lyrical themes backing it up. The songs were bitter and biting, which was a change from the hopeful and nostalgic tracks that were coming down the pike and gaining momentum from Transatlaticism. "Styrofoam Plates" takes an explosive turn near the end, where you almost feel bad that you're intruding on someone's mental breakdown (although eerily laced with a series of "ba ba ba"'s) . It started a trend of me trying to find bands that were as deliberate as Death Cab, avoiding the noise of the ska/punk bands I had been listening to and discovering music that required a more careful listen to feel everything that was going on.

This album though, led to me collecting their entire body of work, and getting supremely geeked out when Plans came out in 2005. Death Cab unfortunately falls into the same category as Dashboard Confessional for a lot of people, despite them toiling away for over 10 years. They created mainstream momentum in very unconventional ways while still maintaining an element of cool for four very uncool dudes from Washington and continue to not apologize for where their music has led them.