Planes, trains and Death Cabs

This is how it started, I think. A few weeks back, I wrote a column called “Hipster-itis” that prominently featured a photo of the band Death Cab for Cutie. (The caption on the photo read something like: “Yes, we know we look like an indie hipster band posing like this, but we’re doing it ironically, okay?”) The article mentioned how hipsters tend to wear large-frame eyeglasses, modern sweaters over collared shirts and sideswept bangs obscuring their faces — coincidentally, exactly what several people in the Death Cab photo were wearing! This was not intentional. I’m actually looking forward to the band coming here, sideswept bangs or not.

Anyway, someone from Warner records must have seen the article, or the photo, and asked if I’d like to interview the band. Well, not exactly the “band,” but one member — bassist Nick Harmer — who was nice enough to sit still in Seattle for our Pan-Asian phoner invasion. So, as the band prepares for a brief regional tour that will include China, Singapore and the Philippines (March 5, NBC Tent), here are a few minutes with Harmer, as he talks about Brian Eno, recording “Codes and Keys” and that Twilight soundtrack, while deftly handling questions about singer Ben Gibbards’ split from actress/singer Zooey Deschanel.

So, Nick, will this be your first time in Manila? What have you heard about us?

NICK HARMER: Yes, it is. Well, some friends of mine have been through on tour before and they’ve said the crowds at shows in Manila are really fun, the crowds are energetic and excited; they make a lot of noise and have a really good time. So I’m actually really excited to know there are at least a few people here excited to see us play and share our music with them.

Which bands that came to Manila gave you a heads-up that we were a good crowd?

I can’t remember… we were all sitting backstage at a festival a year ago, and some band said, “Yeah, we just got back, it was really fun, you guys gotta go—” Oh, was Jimmy Eat World there?

Yeah, about a year ago.

Yeah, totally, that’s who it was. They were talking about Jakarta and Manila, so I’m excited to come.

You’re signed to Warner Atlantic now. Is Death Cab still considered an “indie” band?

That’s never really mattered to me at all. I’m not even really sure what that is, exactly. (Laughs) If you ask everybody, there’s a lot of different definitions of “indie” — if it’s a sound or a sort of political stance or a label or something. We started independently, certainly, for about five years and four albums we were on a small label in Seattle. We were even having a hard time getting distribution outside the United States. We steadily grew and were able to sign to a major and tour outside the States and have better distribution. I’d say we’re not an indie band anymore, but we definitely started there. So we have indie roots, I suppose, as far as that goes.

Live, what’s different from the very careful studio sound you guys have?

I think we still take as much care live as we do in the studio. There’s only four of us, and we try to recreate as much of the material as we can. That being said, I’ve always felt our live shows are a little more energetic and uplifting, and kind of full of, I don’t know, a little more bombast? Our albums are a little more quiet, more personal and intimate. Our live shows, we like to have fun and jump around. We’re very physical performers; we react to our music with a little more physicality. I think, live, people might be surprised to see that we don’t just stand around and look at our shoes and wipe tears off our cheeks.

Your new album, “Codes and Keys,” has been described as being influenced by David Bowie’s “Low” and Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. Are you guys all on the same page, musically, in terms of influences?

For the most part, we are foundationally on the same page musically. What makes our band interesting is we all agree on certain aesthetics and approaches and arrangement choices, almost unanimously. When we all get in the same room, we really look to Ben to provide us with a structure or a demo, and then we get to really explore and bring in all of our influences.

You guys did that second Twilight soundtrack. Was that weird, suddenly having this mass popularity that was maybe different from your core audience, or was it a perfectly natural extension of what you were doing?

I felt it was pretty natural, we didn’t really stray too far from our comfort zone. When they first asked us to do the soundtrack, we said, “Well, who else is gonna be on it?” (Laughs) We saw the other names of artists giving songs, and we felt like we were in good company.

Also, we felt it would be a fun thing to try, we’d never written a song and given an unreleased track to a soundtrack before, so we wanted to see what that experience was about. It was a fun thing to try, I don’t know if we’d necessarily do something like that again.

There were some strange moments where we were scratching our heads, going, “Oh, okay, I guess this is what this is like...” But overall, it didn’t really change the landscape or demographic of the crowd too drastically; we still recognize the people around us okay. (Laughs) But mostly it did what it was supposed to, which is get people who might not have heard of us to hear our band and maybe find some of our albums. So it was a really powerful, big vehicle to sort of use to let people know that you exist and let them make their mind up about it. 

A lot of your music lends itself to a soundtrack feel, so I was wondering if you plan to do it again?

We’ve contributed songs to soundtracks over the years. Most recently, Unobstructed Views was used in the trailer for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. But we’ve never really done a score; we’re interested in it, but I think we’re just waiting for a project that we’re really passionate about.

Nick, do you have any musical side projects?

Nothing specific, I’ve played with other musicians and moonlighted on other albums. I definitely have an interest in filmmaking and writing, outside of the music I make with Death Cab. But I’m always dreaming of, like, piling all the songs together that I’ve been writing on the side, and getting together with some guys and putting it together, putting it out.

Tough question, maybe, but how did Ben’s relationship with Zooey Deschanel affect the songwriting process of this last album, if at all? 

Um, I don’t know. As far as that goes, as musicians we’re all influenced and informed by what’s happening in our spaces outside of the band. I have not actually sat down with Ben and gone through song by song, moment by moment, and said, “How much of your life is really in these lyrics?” But I do know, as a musician, and as somebody who is a very intuitive and feeling person, he does react to the world — same as me, same as (drummer) Nathan Good and (guitarist) Chris Walla. All of those things definitely have a bearing on the music we’re making. So I wouldn’t say “zero” and I wouldn’t say “100 percent,” it’s somewhere on the scale in there. But those are the grounds, like, that’s where Ben is the songwriter and lyricist, and the things he chooses to write about, those are his things. And I can’t really comment on that specifically because I honestly just don’t know.

Okay. Can you describe how you work with Ben or Chris in developing bass lines to his melodies?

Sometimes Ben comes to me with a bass line in his head, other times he leaves it to me. We always kind of write that way. Ben brings in demos in various states of completion — sometimes fleshed out with lyrics, melodies, guitar parts, drums, bass; other times it’s just Ben on piano or acoustic guitar — and the rest of us take it from there. Some of it’s up to Chris as producer, he makes executive decisions on tempo and presentation, things like that. It’s pretty collaborative; we’re very much, collectively, sticklers for details. We’re still very much eager to impress one another.

I heard you guys were influenced by Brian Eno’s “Another Green World” a lot. What in particular did you like about it?

A lot. I mean, we’re huge Eno fans, but over time that’s been taken out of context, one of the things you guys (the press) have been reacting to a lot. I think Chris mentioned we were listening to Brian Eno one time, and that’s gone to “We’re totally hyped up on Eno, and we really want to make an Eno record!” But the reality is we’re all big fans of the music he makes, and we love that album a lot. Big Ship is one song our sound guy would play a lot at the end of our sets. We’ve just been inspired by him, the creative choices he makes in the studio, and we try to get into that mindset. But we never really sat down and said, “Okay, what would Brian Eno do?”

So your next album, you’ll be using Eno’s Oblique Strategies to record…

Exactly! And when we do, they’ll be like, “You’ve been listening to a lot of Lou Reed’s ‘Metal Machine Music’…”