I like to talk about Death Cab for Cutie being my gateway into the indie world, but in reality, for a good two years, I didn't really get into any bands that didn't involve Death Cab members. Of course this included The Postal Service, but also Ben Gibbard's various solo projects and even Chris Walla's solo tracks, both his album Field Manual and the tracks he hosted on his Hall of Justice studio website. They were my true teenage musical love, though it wasn't until at least ten years later that I realised why they captured (possessed?) my heart so thoroughly.
The big obvious reason why I fell so hard for them was because, as previously stated, they were basically the first indie band I'd ever heard of (in addition to finding their music which resonated with me deeply). Prior to this, I had only known music that was played on music video clip shows and mainstream radio - though I was aware of ABC's Rage during my childhood years in Perth, the fact that my mum had control over the car stereo meant that the dial was firmly on adult contemporary station Mix 94.5; I wouldn't discover Triple J until years later.
I'd always enjoyed music, and when I got to about 9 years old, I was opinionated enough to decide that Coldplay was my favourite band (I loved The Scientist and Clocks, and I may still to this day be quite high in the global rankings for enjoyment of their 3rd album X&Y). When it came time for them to release a 4th, I was at an age when I was hungry for art to feel deep within my soul, but sadly Viva La Vida really didn't do it for me. The subsequent years had me consider emo bands like Fallout Boy and Panic! At the Disco, but I could never accept them as part of my soul (I will posit some reasons why in the later-in-life realisations section). Muse was also a regular feature in my listening in those days, but I also couldn't help but keep them at arm's length (plus their songs were way too hard for me to play on my acoustic guitar).
It sounds retrospective now, but even at the time I could feel myself trying on identities and not finding any that fit. It didn't help that my peers were completely unadventurous in their music tastes and were happy to go along with whatever was trendy (including a frankly exhausting few months of Michael Jackson obsession after his death). But sometime in 2008, I was on the family desktop with the TV on set to VH1 (certainly fortunate to have grown up with cable TV in Indonesia), when I heard a closing snippet of a song and I glimpsed the chyron that would show up at the end. It was a long song title that began with "I", but I caught the name of the band. I looked up "Death Cab for Cutie" on Youtube - really mixing old and new media here - and found "I Will Follow You Into the Dark". It wasn't the same song as the one I'd heard a tiny bit of, but I thought it was nice enough (I put it in the same bucket as the emo bands I enjoyed listening to but decided wasn't for me). But then I stumbled onto a video that turned out to be a performance of "Title and Registration" from their tour documentary Drive Well, Sleep Carefully. When the bass came in for the first chorus, we were away. I Limewired all the albums, the EPs, the demos, Give Up, and didn't shut up about them for at least a couple of years.
It felt amazing to uncover this magical underworld of music that nobody in my life had ever heard of. Not only that, but this was music that spoke to me. Never mind that it was multiple albums almost entirely about failed or failing romances when the romantic failures I'd experienced up to that point were because they'd failed to get anywhere close to starting. Unfortunately, I don't sufficiently understand how the sound of the music resonated with my inner frequencies, so please take me at my word that the instrumentation and production (Chris Walla you fucking legend) played huge parts in making the songs so good, but I can confidently describe how Ben Gibbard's lyrics formed fundamental parts of my soul.
What I knew I liked then was that I recognised that Gibbard used literary devices I learned in English in his songs, and that I could see how using those devices helped him deliver the messages and feelings that he wanted. I remember thinking that someone could use the lyrics to "Styrofoam Plates" and possibly some others to teach a class on literary devices. But most of all, I just felt like the vibes of their songs matched whatever I was feeling inside. It might've been during the lockdowns or when I'd moved away from my parents' place after them - either way, over a decade later - when I realised, the feeling I had that resonated with Death Cab songs was anger, and that they had helped me channel my anger both as a teenager and during the pandemic.
Fallout Boy and Panic didn't hit for me because their version of anger is outward-facing, telling people "I hate you", and crying their eyes out. Muse's anger was towards systems of injustice and advocating for revolution, thoughts about which I didn't formulate until later in adolescence and in any case wasn't expressed through music. But Death Cab's anger matched mine. It's inward-facing, thinking thoughts like "why am I feeling like this" and "I hate that things aren't how I want them to be", and felt like working through one's own emotions (without necessarily commenting on the quality of the processing). It is kind of wimpy, it is pretty soft, but that's who I am. I do have big feelings and I do want to express them, but what I want is to talk it out and reach some closure. And I fucking love that Transatlanticism, my favourite Death Cab album and my favourite album of all time, ends at a point of closure, not with the narrator's love interest, but with themself: "this is fact, not fiction, for the first time in years".
They get me. This is who I am. This is not a phase.
…well, it kind of was a phase. Highly unfortunate circumstances notwithstanding, Death Cab will be my favourite band forever. But since Codes and Keys I haven't really followed their output so much, and I treat them like a best friend from school - I have many wonderful memories with them, reconnect occasionally, but really I'm just happy they're happy doing their own thing (though Asphalt Meadows and I Built You A Tower are very strong late-career offerings). I'm far from the only person whose favourite band helped them find themselves as a teenager, but I'm also grateful that Death Cab has done that again for me as an adult.