“An album is only a snapshot of where a band is at a particular moment,” Nick Harmer, bassist for Death Cab for Cutie, said in anticipation of the band’s show at DAR Constitution Hall on Monday, Nov. 6. “The next time we make a record, we’ll be in completely different spaces.”
From the release of Something About Airplanes in 1998 to the recent commercial success of 2005’s Plans, Death Cab has certainly come a long way from their indie roots in Bellingham, WA.
“The profile of the band has definitely grown,” Harmer explained, a modest assertion given the band’s Grammy nomination this past year and their album sales of more than 744,000 copies in the United States alone. It seems that DCFC is beginning to develop a whole new fan base that extends far beyond Bellingham and The O.C. viewers.
Currently on embarking on Death Cab’s third major tour in support of Plans, Harmer noted that the increase in fame can often be surreal.
“We’ll still play some of the songs today that we played on our first tour, and I can think about being in small [venues] playing to 50 people, if that … playing the [same song] again in front of a few thousand people can be mind-boggling.”
While Death Cab has always been a tour-heavy band, sometimes hitting the same cities more than once in a year, the group strives to keep performances fresh for its fans:
“We’ve always been a band with an ‘anything can happen’ kind of feel…we’re not at a point of danger where we [say,] ‘Who’s going to blow themselves up out of a cannon?’ But there’s always a little bit of an edge to what [we] might do next.” In fact, Harmer reports that Death Cab frontman Ben Gibbard keeps a running database of every set that the band has played in each city and uses the list to ensure that “every [show] is a different experience for people in that area.”
After Death Cab finishes touring at the beginning of December, the group will take a short break and then begin work on a new album. Whether or not a new album will augment or stifle the band’s burgeoning renown remains uncertain. However, Death Cab seems to be taking all of the hype with a grain of salt.
“Bands are lucky to be relevant for a little while. Then that sort of pop culture arc comes down on the other side and things change. We are probably somewhere near the peak of that now. And then in a few years, no matter how good our music is, people will probably just not care. We’re realistic.”
Realistic or not, if an album offers a snapshot of “how [a band is] related to the world,” then Death Cab for Cutie should feel nothing less than photogenic right now.
