‘Asphalt Meadows’ Review: Death Cab for Cutie Pave a New Path

Death Cab for Cutie’s 10th studio album “Asphalt Meadows,” released on Sept. 16, isn’t the indie rockers’ first attempt at picking up the pieces of a world in disarray. 2015’s “Kintsugi,” which took its name from the traditional Japanese practice of using metallic lacquer to repair pottery, fused its narrative fragments into a softly lustrous meditation on temporal and spatial distance. Now, instead of smoothing life over with the silver-tongued charm of their early days, the band lets “Asphalt Meadows” grow like weeds fighting through concrete.

Over a snappy guitar riff and offbeat claps on album opener “I Don’t Know How I Survive,” lead singer Ben Gibbard tries to give some reassuring advice: “Listen to the sound of your heartbeat / Growing louder, gaining speed / You’re breathin’ out, breathin’ in.” After a brief pause for air, the music unravels into a strident outburst. Gibbard lets discord engulf his mellow voice while admitting that “These nights, I don’t know how I survive.” He delivers each subsequent recurrence of the phrase with rising intensity until, in the outro, the volume drops to a “whispering, whispering” lull.

The next song, lead single “Roman Candles,”shatters the calm with a bang. Relentless drums and bass herald Gibbard’s initial declaration of conflict. “It’s been a battle just to wake and greet the day,” he sings — but even as sonic sparks fly around him, he never loses his cool. Even his prolonged howls sound more melodic than melancholy. The second verse offers a possible reason for this uncanny composure: “I used to feel everything like a flame / Now it’s a struggle just to feel anything,” Gibbard mourns the former ease of emotion. The chorus highlights his refusal to add fuel to the fire by rekindling the past: “But I am learning to let go / Of everything I tried to hold / Too long ‘cause they all explode / Like Roman candles.”

Similarly forceful percussion fills the title track with resentment against the soul-crushing monotony of urban “asphalt meadows,” where “There’s only one thing that grows / Finding the life through the concrete / Getting trampled under our feet.” A backbeat that lands like heavy footfalls weighs almost too heavily on what might have flourished as a dreamy ballad.

Though Gibbard described “Here to Forever” as a testament to “our impermanence and the anxiety of these times,” the album’s second pre-release single boldly reaches for eternity. “I want to know the measure from here to forever,” Gibbard declares in the chorus, revealing profound curiosity about his near future and eventual legacy. Whether Death Cab will go the way of the ’50s movie stars with whom Gibbard “can’t help falling in love” lies beyond his control, a fact that causes him increasing worry: “Now it seems more than ever there’s no hands on the levers.”

In the face of this uncertainty, Gibbard concludes the album by celebrating one of the most important choices he has the power to make. “I’ll never give up on you,” he repeats over and over on the track of the same name, seemingly addressing both a single person and society at large while raspy guitars lend his declaration a fitting tenacity. “Asphalt Meadows,” Death Cab’s first LP in over four years, will leave many hoping that the band never gives up on music either.

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