Writing is Such a Solitary Act - Ben Gibbard's return to Music

Front man Ben Gibbard's battle with alcoholism kept Death Cab for Cutie out of the studio, but they're back with a sober vocalist and a more positive album: Codes and Keys.
--

Three years ago was the last time we heard the artistry of Death Cab for Cutie with their second major label album and sixth LP release, Narrow Stairs. So where has the band been since the album that hit number one on the Billboard 200?

Photo: musicisentrophy 
Creative Commons License 

Lead singer and creative mastermind of Death Cab for Cutie, Ben Gibbard has since battled and kicked an alcoholism problem. According to an interview with SPIN magazine, Gibbard’s alcohol abuse was largely due to the writing process for Death Cab’s “darkest and most muscular in the band’s discography,” as reviewed by Pitchfork. Gibbard explains, “Writing is such a solitary act. You spend hours alone, only with your thoughts, and you torture yourself. It's a tendency of many writers to temper the self-destructive act of writing with other self-destructive acts. I certainly was one of those people for a long time." According to the interview with SPIN, a weekend in Big Sur, California brought Gibbard’s to the realization that he had fallen to deep in his alcoholism and said, “I have lost my ability to control this.”

Further explained in the Interview, since the weekend in Big Sur, Gibbard’s has picked himself out of the darkness, coining long distance running and his marriage to Zooey Deschanel as “a positive act [that] helps to balance the negative act of being a writer.”

According to the interview with SPIN, getting sober has shown through Gibbard’s more positive writing for Death Cab for Cutie's next album Codes and Keys to release May 31, 2011. Death Cab debuted the album to a home state crowd in Seattle, Washington. The Seattle Times reviewed the hastily arranged and sold out show as a solid two-hour set with few technical difficulties, “but no one cared, because Death Cab is back with new music to love.”

Codes and Keys, as reviewed by SPIN magazine, is jam packed with a newfound confidence and “eager-beaver optimism.” Gibbard’s describes it as the album about having finally escaped “a maze of a thousand rainy days,” and sings of his new bride, Zooey Deschanel as inspiring the lyrics “oh, how I feel alive.”

The Huffington Post gives a glimpse of Death Cab’s video for “Home Is A Fire” off of Codes and Keys, where Death Cab collaborated with street artist Shepard Fairly—“The outcome is a manifest to the natural link between art and music.”



Don't forget to grab a copy of Codes and Keys out May 31st, and check out Death Cab for Cutie this summer in a city near you.

Tweet