A Return to Form Through Grief
There are different tiers of grief: the self-induced, the tragic, and the unspeakable. In recent years, Ben Gibbard, one of indie rock’s prevailing figureheads, has unwittingly endured all three. That much is clear on I Built You a Tower, the latest album from Death Cab for Cutie. Sorrow has always been a songwriting wellspring for Gibbard, who built his band’s reputation on an ability to sort tangled pain into unique talismans. As he’s aged into a more stable adult, the band’s sound has similarly mellowed. However, this latest batch of hardships, particularly a divorce, pushed Gibbard to a place of such exhaustion that he has come full circle to his younger, more overwhelmed self—and with it, his best musical impulses in a decade.
Despite compartmentalizing these problems, Gibbard couldn’t admit their compounding weight until 2023. It’s a sentiment echoed on “Riptides,” where he confesses: “I’m too tired to end the war/And I can’t seem to hold it together.” I Built You a Tower reckons with the moment that agony begins to spill over, but without invoking a victim complex. His body keeps the score, but his age grants a new perspective: “How heavenly a state/The acceptance of collapsing,” he sings.
Revitalizing the Indie Rock Sound
Yet that weariness doesn’t plague the music itself. After spending the 2010s drifting through various experimental phases, the band rebounded with creative momentum on Asphalt Meadows. Throughout I Built You a Tower, they revive the yearning that propelled their original indie rock, alongside an insatiable focus. Nick Harmer swings his bass with a command that rivals his work on Narrow Stairs. It’s the closest the group has sounded to their golden era since the departure of Chris Walla, while still reflecting the mature band standing in the present.
The uncomplicated nature of the songs means the record flickers with hallmarks of the band’s early era. This quality isn’t a result of nostalgia bait, but the fact that this current iteration of the group—Gibbard, Harmer, drummer Jason McGerr, guitarist-keyboardist Dave Depper, and multi-instrumentalist Zac Rae—prefers a less-is-more approach. After several records of muted ideas, they sound emboldened again.
A Record of Acceptance
As he did on Asphalt Meadows, producer John Congleton plucks the right tones from the band to draw a blend of intimacy and energy. The heartbreak and grief are near-constant, but they are met with a measure of stabilizing levelheadedness. I Built You a Tower is a record of acceptance: that grief won’t ever fully vanish, that heartbreak is a two-party problem, and that discomfort is best resolved by sitting with it.
The album begins with “Full of Stars,” a gentle stir of acoustic guitar and piano, and concludes with “I Built You a Tower (B),” a frigid rock song washed in feedback. Alongside the lyrics, it becomes clear that the album’s ordering reflects the maturity and selflessness underpinning this release: Ask for forgiveness first; rebuke your faults last. After decades of sketching protagonists who squirm under crumbling relationships, here, the band enters a new era: one without self-pity or reproach.
