Death Cab for Cutie - Thank You for Today

Seattle indie rockers Death Cab for Cutie return with their 9th studio album "Thank You for Today". Most of the publicty around this album seems to focus on how it's the first album Death Cab have released without founding member Chris Walla.  And also that they brought in guitarist Dave Depper on guitar and Zac Rae on keyboards for the first time.  This kind of change in the band does bring questions on how this will effect Death Cab's sound and what direction they will take.

Well to answer this, this is easily recognisable as a Death Cab album. It still has that same kind of chirpy guitar flow to it and Ben Gibbard's noticable vocal style. When I first heard the singles come out one by one I did get very excited for this record. I thought "Gold Rush", "I Dreamt we spoke again" and "Autumn Love" were all excellent and still do.  But the rest of the album feels a bit like they are on auto pilot a bit in terms of their sound. Don't get me wrong they still good songs but I don't feel like its anything they haven't done before. They did bring Lauren Mayberry in from Chrvches in for the track "Northern Lights" to do some vocals.  However, I don't feel it adds a great deal to the track but doesn't take away from it either. 

One thing though that this album is missing and would turn this album from a good album to a great album is that epic track which is lacking here. The likes of Tranatlantasim" and "They might be giants" from the album "Transatlantasism" or "I will possess your heart" off "Narrow Stairs" are no where to be seen. To me those songs took those albums and Death Cab for Cutie into the highest of heights of indie rock.  It almost feels that "Thank You for Today" was the safe option for them. They can churn out 4 minute indie tracks all day long. But writing that epic its a bit more challenging, a bit more risky in terms of whether they can pull it off etc. Especially if former guitarist Walla was the inspiration behind the longer tracks.

Overall though this is still a good album.  If I hadn't heard any of the previous classic albums that they had made before it I would have been more impressed with this. It is just I know what they are really capable of.  But this time I think they chose to get settled in with the new line up. Hopefully they can go off a bit more adventurous in future as we all know they can pull it off.