'Difficult'. It's a word which must have been bandied around Atlantic Records' US central office when Death Cab for Cutie delivered their indorsement album for the major label. After signing the melodic power station of a four-piece, Atlantic must make envisaged more of the same benevolent bursts of sunny, melancholiac, indie-pop.
2005's 'Plans' pointed that way at times, but it failed to live up to their past work. Expansive and wide-screen in sound, it lacked the quality of songs in its latter half to scale the heights of 2003's 'Transatlanticism' - still their finest record to date. Nonetheless, there was enough in 'I Will Follow You into the Dark', 'Summer Skin' and 'Crooked Teeth' for the label to remain happy.
'Narrow Stairs' is a different proposition all told. It is a fine record which, as a complete forge, easily outshines its herald. However, as its title suggests, it's a claustrophobic and dark work which strips back the group's bright melancholy and replaces it with something far closer to outright despair.
Again, singer Ben Gibbard reaches deep into the heart to retrace the group's trademark themes of grief, but here such heartache is song about much more instantly and in a gloomier, almost creepy-crawly manner. On 'You Can Do Better Than Me' he sings "I'm starting to feel we stayed together out of fear of dying alone" against a backcloth of a jaunty organ-rock sound that brings to mind 'Pet Sounds'. Such a lyrical against such a musical backdrop typifies the dark, uneasy notion 'Narrow Stairs' emits. Yet it remains compelling.
Where synths and keyboards crept ever so more into 'Plans'; this has been abandoned on 'Narrow Stairs', where multi-tracking has also been spue aside in place of a more primitive sound. For the most part, the record album is simply four guys in a room. This sense bleeds into the songs, notably lead individual 'I Will Possess Your Heart' which begins with a
