The Wake

Grunge died ten years ago. Which is why Death Cab for Cutie, current Seattlelite sensations, sound nothing like it. Though the band – Ben Gibbard, guitar and vocals; Chris Walla, guitar; Nick Harmer, bass; and Michael Schoor –hails from the slate-gray birthplace of bleach and bi-polar frontmen, they’ve taken a decidedly different approach to music from their clinically-depressed cousins. Making a stripped-down Pet Sounds on anti-depressants sound good, Death Cab’s music has sutured the broken hearts of overwhelmed emotional teenagers everywhere; kids who just can’t seem to stop wearing their hearts on their sleeves. Recently, with the release of their latest record, Transatlanticism, the band has swung into overdrive, launching a national tour de Death Cab. The band will also be playing alongside fellow Washingtonians Pearl Jam in moveon.org’s Vote for Change tour. Recently, band member Nick Harmer spoke with The Wake about all things death . . . and destruction . . . and . . . death . . . and . . . Dave Matthews?

You’re going to tour with Blink 182, how do you feel about that?

We’re pretty damn excited about it. I mean those guys – they’re obviously not the same style of music as our band, but they are just super, really nice guys. They sort of were a fan of our album Transatlanticism . . . and we sort of struck up a friendship with them over the past year. Then it came time to do some touring and they wrote to us and were like, “hey, this would be crazy but would you guys be interested in touring with us in Europe?” And we’re like, “that would be crazy . . . but it’d be fun.” So there we are.

How do you guys feel about being labeled as “emo?”

You know, we don’t really get much of a say in that stuff. As long as there are people making abstract things in the world like music and art and film, there will always be writers that need to sort of try to explain that to people who haven’t seen them yet or haven’t heard them yet. And so they’re always going to come up with words to describe that stuff. It’s always a sad thing when the word starts to just only mean a few things . . . so when something gets called “emo,” or when something gets called “grunge” . . . if that starts to limit people, if people just automatically decide that, “oh, I just decided I don’t like anything emo,” well, it just starts to make people’s minds close down a little bit. So I think that really, it’s sort of a struggle on the part of the writer to come up with their own creative ways to describe something. It’s always easy to describe something the way everybody else it describing it, but I think it’s more creative – and it shows a better writer – to search for words and descriptions that maybe people haven’t thought of before.

How do you feel about the new fan base that’s come in the wake of Transatlanticism?

More than anything, we’re all just really excited about it. We’re really happy – we want people to have a chance to find out about our band and find out about what we do; we like what we do, and we’re happy that people are liking it to.

So you guys wouldn’t necessarily be the Indie-snob type?

No . . . no. I mean, I don’t have any kind of time in my life for that kind of stuff. I mean, we’ve never, as individuals, specifically myself – like, I’ve never been cool and hip, and like able to wear the rat clothes and have the great haircut and all that stuff, so I don’t want anything in my life to be dictated by having to maintain an aura of coolness and mystery that just isn’t really there in the world. It’s all fabricated. We’re just guys that get together, we make music, we like making music together, and we like playing shows – it’s real simple.

Is the internet helping musicians more than it’s hurting them?

We’ve certainly only felt the real positive aspects of it. I suppose if you were like Dave Matthews and your bus driver just dumped a bunch of poop all over a bunch of people you’d be a little sad on how fast the internet reports on that kind of stuff – everyone gets to know real quick. But for us it’s only been good things for us so far.

Tell us about what lead you to touring with the moveon.org tour, in support of the Kerry / Edwards ticket?

Well, we had been sort of minorly politically active. Starting about a year ago we started figuring, we need to have people come out on tour and help with voter registration, and we realized that it was going to be a pretty important election coming up. And so it kind of starting growing from there. As the election has gotten closer and as things have gotten progressively worse – the situation in Iraq always seems to keep getting more and more terrible, we’ve realized that we need to escalate where we were at as a band and how we were feeling as people and escalate our involvement. It’s a time that’s really divisive. There’s a lot of lines and lies being drawn, and you know, it’s hard to know what’s right and wrong and what’s good and bad. It makes me frustrated . . . did you hear that quote by Cheney when he said “if Kerry wins the presidency, I guarantee there will be more terrorist attacks?” That’s ridiculous! Are you kidding me? I mean, talk about a culture of fear . . . like, I guarantee there’s going to be more terrorist attacks because of what his [Bush / Cheney] administration has done, period. It drives me crazy that they would try to swing an election by evoking terrorism.

Brigitte Mussack contributed to this article.