Death Cab for Cutie Announces Fall Seattle Date
Death Cab for Cutie
Date: Saturday, October 3, 2015 @ 8:00 PM
Venue: Paramount Theatre
Age Limit: All Ages / Bar w/ Valid ID
Price: $45.00 (not including fees)
Seating: GA Flat Floor & Reserved Balcony
On Sale: Friday, January 30, 2015 @ 10:00 AM
Ticketing Information: Available online at Tickets.com, 24-hour ticket kiosks located outside the Paramount, Moore, and Neptune Theatre, Sonic Boom Records in Ballard, in person at the Paramount box office, or may also be purchased by phone at 1-877-STG-4TIX. For more information, visit STGPresents.org.
Death Cab for Cutie knew immediately that Kintsugi would fit perfectly as the title of their eighth studio album. A philosophy derived from the Japanese art of repairing cracked ceramics with gold to highlight flaws instead of hiding them, kintsugi speaks to the way an object’s history is part of its aesthetic value. “Considering what we were going through internally, and with what a lot of the lyrics are about, it had a great deal of resonance for us – the idea of figuring out how to repair breaks and make them a thing of beauty,” says bassist Nick Harmer, who suggested the name to singer-guitarist Ben Gibbard and drummer Jason McGerr. “Philosophically, spiritually, emotionally, it seems perfect for this group of songs.”
Long before they gave the album its name, the band embarked on a process that forced them to do things differently than they ever had before. For instance, in the course of making their seven previous albums, the Seattle band hadn’t written much in the studio together. They had always preferred to hone their arrangements separately, or with just two or three of them playing at once. But when it came time to record Kintsugi, Death Cab for Cutie went into the studio with the openest of minds. Their willingness to try anything – including a twenty-minute exploration that evolved into one of the album’s finest tracks, “The Ghosts Of Beverly Drive” – yields Death Cab’s most compelling new work in years: an album that packs as much sonic as it does emotional wallop.
Kintsugi is the band’s first time recording with a producer other than their own Chris Walla, the guitarist and multi-instrumentalist whose talents behind the board had helped shape Death Cab’s sound since Gibbard released the You Can Play These Songs With Chordscassette in 1997. For Kintsugi, they worked with Rich Costey (whose production credits include albums by Franz Ferdinand, Muse, and Interpol), recording at his Los Angeles studio Eldorado over the course of twelve weeks in the first half of 2014. “He was all in in a way that I don’t think a lot of producers are nowadays,” says Gibbard. “We couldn’t have landed on a better collaborator for this record. He accomplished what we’ve always attempted, which is to make Death Cab sound on a record how we sound live. And we’re a rock band live. The difficulty now for the live show is making them rock as hard as they rock on the record. That’s a new quagmire for this band.”