Asphalt Meadows Is Death Cab for Cutie’s Most Consistent Album in Over a Decade

For the most part, Death Cab for Cutie’s music falls into one of two camps: the scrappy, Pacific Northwest indie of their early days or the radio-ready, arena-adjacent hits of their later years. The middle point between these two poles is 2003’s Transatlanticism, a masterpiece that helped Death Cab transition from the winsome simplicity of The Photo Album into the chart-topping sounds of Plans. The group’s 10th album, Asphalt Meadows, blends these two modes of operation in a career-spanning feat. Although some of its songs lean heavily into one styling or the other, its composite package borrows from the whole gamut of Death Cab’s oeuvre, rather than one camp or the other.

That’s not to say that Asphalt Meadows lacks an identity of its own. The band’s latest work contains some of the heaviest, noisiest songs in their catalog, and it makes that clear from the outset. Opener “I Don’t Know How I Survive” starts like most Death Cab for Cutie songs would; a melodic guitar line gives way to frontman Benjamin Gibbard’s rumination on an existential dilemma: “Listen to the ringing in your ears / The scrambled voices of your fears.” By the time the chorus enters, though, a blast of cacophonous noise rings out that wouldn’t sound out of place on last year’s Low record. The BJ Burton-esque, clipping levels of volume are, generally speaking, novel to Death Cab, a band often aligned with a reclusive, bookish demeanor that you wouldn’t expect to get really fucking loud.

The Seattle stalwarts keep up the pace on the next track, lead single “Roman Candles.” In a quick, two-minute burst, Gibbard explores the ephemeral nature of joy while a growling low end lurks underneath. An ascending, distorted guitar line enters the fold shortly thereafter, and the song only keeps building upon itself from there, adding layers and layers of heaviness that contrast the soft tunefulness of Gibbard’s distinctive voice. It’s these louder moments that expand the notion of what a Death Cab for Cutie song can be. For such an established band over two decades into their career, it’s an impressive achievement, and it’s part of what makes Asphalt Meadows their best work since 2008’s Narrow Stairs.

On a similar note, it also has one of the best Death Cab for Cutie songs to date. “Foxglove through the Clearcut” switches between pensive spoken-word sections and Transatlanticism-indebted catharsis, like Cassandra Jenkins’ “Hard Drive” with loud, alt-rock guitars. Gibbard chronicles the ethnic cleansing and colonization of Indigenous peoples in the United States, evoking a quote from Cheyenne Chief White Antelope (though it’s misattributed to another Cheyenne leader, Black Kettle) to underlie the sense of placelessness that can result from occupation. The penultimate song, “Fragments from the Decade,” which features some of Jason McGerr’s most tasteful drumming this side of “What Sarah Said,” also examines how we all live on stolen land: “Days are lonely and long / Walking in place where you don’t belong / Here on paved Native lands / Time disappears from the palm of your hands.” Whereas Death Cab’s 2010s output littered some good tracks throughout, such as “Your Hurricane,” “You Are a Tourist” and “No Room in Frame,” Asphalt Meadows houses a bunch of them in one place. It makes for a more gratifying, consistent experience compared to its most recent predecessors.