Five Years after ‘Kintsugi,’ Death Cab for Cutie Is Still Mending Hearts

UPDATED: November 2, 2021 at 12:00 a.m.

Practitioners of the ancient Japanese art “kintsugi” piece together shards of pottery with metallic lacquer, turning unsightly fault lines into shimmering channels of silver and gold. American alt-rock band Death Cab for Cutie’s eighth studio album, released five years ago, shares its namesake’s goal of finding beauty in the broken.

Like its ceramic counterpart, Death Cab for Cutie’s “Kintsugi” grows out of assorted fragments. Each of the album’s 11 tracks offers a transient meditation on nostalgia and regret, held together not by gold varnish but by frontman Ben Gibbard’s mellow voice — golden in its own right.

Gibbard, who confronts his circumstances with realism and acceptance on “Kintsugi,” offers listeners a message of renewal when despair seems close at hand. The album’s opener, “No Room in Frame,” offers a harrowing assessment of a relationship gone awry: “And we’ll both go on and get lonely with someone else,” Gibbard predicts. But his tone is not one of malice or anger; rather, he acknowledges the inevitability of the split and finds the strength to move forward.

The next track, “Black Sun,” reaffirms the existence of a silver lining. “There is an answer in a question / And there is hope within despair / And there is beauty in a failure,” begins the second verse. But Gibbard stops short of pure idealism, acknowledging the difficulty of compassion: “And there is grace within forgiveness / But it’s so hard for me to find.” Gibbard’s recognition of his own shortcomings humanizes his messages.

On a more personal scale, Gibbard reflects on the quirks of memory and loss. No matter how much he tries to leave his past behind, he finds himself inexplicably drawn to it. “I don’t know why, I don’t know why / I return to the scenes of these crimes,” he sings on “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive,” an uptempo track about his former life in Los Angeles.

The rest of the album touches on both emotional and geographic isolation. “Little Wanderer” is a wistfully expectant exploration of the latter, with Gibbard realizing the logistical challenges of going long-distance: “Doing the math to the time zone you're at / Is an unseen part of the plan.” He also notes a cruel irony unique to modern times, as the very technology designed to bring Gibbard and his partner closer together only emphasizes the distance between them. “But I couldn’t make you out through the glitches… So we say our goodbyes over Messenger / As the network overloads,” he recounts.

Technology reappears as a central motif in the final track, “Binary Sea,” in which Gibbard speculates about a future where the traces of his data across the world’s computers are the only remaining proof of his existence.

Given the acuity of his observations on “Kintsugi,” Gibbard was well aware of his band’s relationship with isolation well before it became a hallmark of the present. In an interview with Billboard shortly after the album’s release, Gibbard explained Death Cab for Cutie’s appeal. “People turn to us because they don't want to feel alone in their melancholic moments,” he said. "And I'm happy to provide that soundtrack."

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Gibbard and his bandmates are once again delivering “that soundtrack.” On Mar. 16, Gibbard announced that he would livestream daily concerts from home to thank and reassure his fans. In a letter he posted to social media, Gibbard described the current situation as a “nightmare” and stated his awareness of our collective fear and loneliness. “I know it has left us all incredibly isolated,” he wrote of recommended social distancing measures.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on, y’all?” Gibbard asked viewers on Mar. 17 as the first livestream began. He then launched into a soulful rendition of “We Will Become Silhouettes,” a single he released with his former band The Postal Service. The song’s opening lines matched the context of the performance with uncanny accuracy: “I’ve got a cupboard with cans of food / Filtered water, and pictures of you / And I’m not coming out until this is all over.”

The livestream featured fan favorites from Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, along with a cover of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees.” After the last song — The Postal Service’s “The District Sleeps Alone Tonight” — Gibbard urged viewers to take care of themselves and each other. A deluge of enthusiastic comments replaced applause, and the screen went dark.

The next day, Gibbard started his livestream with “No Room in Frame.” During what would have been a lush instrumental break with backup from his bandmates, he vocalized the melody over softly strummed chords. In a way, his improvisation embodied the soul of kintsugi: turning something incomplete into its own work of art.

The world may be in pieces. But, as Death Cab for Cutie have shown time and again, it’s never beyond repair.

CORRECTION: November 1, 2021

A previous version of this article misstated that Kintsugi was Death Cab for Cutie’s second studio album. In fact, it is its eighth studio album.

— Staff writer Clara V. Nguyen can be reached at clara.nguyen@thecrimson.com.