| NICK HARMER of DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE on a Tuesday morning... |
| Written by Shahlin Graves |
| Tuesday, 31 May 2011 17:18 |
 Three years on from the Grammy-nominated 'Narrow Stairs', DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE bassist NICK HARMER is eagerly awaiting the official release date of the band's seventh studio album, 'CODES AND KEYS'. While on a short run of sold-out North American tour dates in the lead-up to the release of the new album, Harmer calls Coup De Main from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, immediately expressing his joy: "I am very, very excited. I couldn't be any more excited actually. It's about time, so hopefully, hopefully people will enjoy it." Over a seven month period last year, Death Cab For Cutie travelled up and down the West Coast of the 'States recording new songs in ten-day or two-week sessions, letting the songs "gestate" in between working on the album. This patchwork-quilt-like construction process really shines through on 'Codes and Keys' - an album that could be considered the yang to the yin of 'Narrow Stairs', yet still retains all the hallmark familiarity of classic Death Cab For Cutie.  COUP DE MAIN: When I interviewed Chris Walla back in 2008 for the release of your last album 'Narrow Stairs', he said that it was "criminal" that Death Cab For Cutie had been a band for eleven years and still hadn't come to New Zealand... it's now fourteen years! When are you going to finally come to New Zealand?! DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE - NICK HARMER: <laughs> I hope soon! It IS criminal that we haven't been down there, it's so hard to get a routing together sometimes. But it's on our list! Every, every time we start a tour, we always ask ourselves which cities and which countries haven't we been to and which ones would be fun to go to - and New Zealand is ALWAYS on the list and we never have been able to make it. So, it's on our list again! I'm pushing for it. We're all pushing for it. So hopefully the booking agents and the people who put all that stuff together can all work something out, because we definitely, definitely want to go! CDM: What do you feel are the main points of difference between 'Narrow Stairs' and your new album, 'Codes and Keys'? NICK: I think probably the two main points of difference are, [firstly] how we recorded the album. We recorded 'Narrow Stairs' to twenty-four tracks of analogue tape, pretty much all of us were tracking live in a room with very minimal over-dubs and texture added in the studio, and 'Codes and Keys' was recorded into a computer with the Logic [Pro] program with an infinity of options and noises and things available to us because of that. So, we really layered and textured and got into adding melody and counter-melody, and just making each song as dense as they wanted to be. We were even able to use strings and a string-section on a couple of songs - which we've never done before - because we had the space for it in the recording, which was great. So there's sort of a real utilitarian difference between the two, just in terms of how we actually made the record. And then, I also feel that there's also a pretty strong emotional difference between the two albums. 'Narrow Stairs' is a pretty dark album in its overall feel, certainly there was a lot of darkness happening to all of us in the band outside of the band during that album and album-cycle. And certainly for Ben [Gibbard] as a songwriter, [he] was exploring some more darker themes and some heavier themes in his life at that point, and due to some great stuff that's been happening to all of us in our personal lives outside of the band since then, we're in much healthier and happier places right now. And I feel like 'Codes and Keys' overall is a much better balanced album emotionally, than 'Narrow Stairs'. There's still... I think that we're always going to be interested in writing about heartbreak and some of the more bittersweet moments of life, but I think there's also some really happy moments, and some more positive moments on this album I should say - without it sounding too saccharine or sweet, I mean there's nothing really pop-y, but certainly, I guess there's just more light when I listen to the two side-by-side. CDM: Was there much experimentation during the 'Codes and Keys' recording process? NICK: Certainly from Chris as a producer, from him, he had a lot of new instruments that were really exciting to him and the process - working with analogue synths, and building loops in Logic, and playing with textures and stuff like that - that a lot of times he just had to say: "Trust me! I know what I'm doing with this one." And even though we could't hear it, we would have to believe in it... and sure enough, something came together and it was awesome. So I think that there was some experimenting going on, certainly for me, I played the bass guitar on just about every song but there's a couple of songs that I didn't even touch the bass on that I ended up using other instruments and other voices on. So that's kind of exciting just for me and my contributions to the album. So yeah, I think there was some experimenting going on. But nothing crazy, it wasn't like we handmade noise-makers out of I-don't-know old VCR's and tried to make music that way. It was all still fairly similar-y, we all just really tried to open up the sonic palette a little bit and use some songs or some sounds that we haven't really tried to use in the past before. CDM: Was it a conscious decision to put so much effort into deconstructing and layering all of the songs on the new album? NICK: Definitely. I think that the span of the album is actually unique that way and I think that when you look at the running order - you take a song like 'Home Is A Fire', the first song on the album, which is a very deconstructed pop-song and layered that way and certainly not like a full-band arrangement in some ways, and then you end up with a song like 'Stay Young, Go Dancing' which is a very formal pop-song in almost every way [with] full-band playing, [a] beautiful string-section, harmonies, verses and choruses... I think that having both of those sorts of songs bookend the album really catches the scope of everything. But all the while we were looking at ways that we could take sounds and make them more interesting. Chris said it once, he wanted every song to have what he called a "sonic hook" - so that there was a sound for it, there was a mood or a tone or a sonic signature that was unmistakable from every other song on the album. So that when you first heard it start, you would know, so that I would know what song I'm listening to, whether you were to hear the melody yet or even know what the chorus is going to do, you would still find something unique about the presentation of the instruments. And I think that he did a really good job working out the sonic signatures of every song on this album. They all sound pretty unique to me I think, yet they all live together really nicely in the flow of an album running order. CDM: At the end of last year, you said in an interview that 'Codes and Keys' summed up many things that Death Cab For Cutie have always been trying to do and are now finally able to. What are those things? NICK: I really feel like we've hit our stride in terms of our workflow and how we made this album. Our creativity seems to be at an all-time high right now and I think that this album very much blends the two different styles of recording that we really worked through with the way that we recorded 'Plans' and the way that we recorded 'Narrow Stairs'. 'Plans' was very, very piece-by-piece, almost so separated from each other that we all had a very hard time understanding what album we were making and what it really meant, in some ways. I mean, that was a strange time for a lot of reasons, we switched from being on a small indie label in Seattle to a big major label and all the sort of pressure around doing that thing. 'Narrow Stairs' was sort of a reaction to that, 180-degrees the opposite way, which was, we all forced each other to all sit in a room and play every song together looking at each other holding our instruments. Really, no-one could get out of that space. We really wanted to go... I don't want to say that it was a live album, but we really wanted to have the core of every song be a performance that was captured right-to-tape and be finished as we were done with it. It was a great accomplishment for us and a challenge for us to do that, but we didn't allow ourselves to let our creative minds to just run and go and do the crazy things that we also are good at. I think that 'Codes and Keys' very much is the perfect combination of that. There's a strong sense of performance on this album, not every song is recorded in a box in sections, and yet, we allowed ourselves to explore all of the sonic territory that was interesting to us with textures and loops and sounds, samples, keyboards, and just voicings that we had always wanted to try but had never really found a proper home for. Again, a great example of that is the use of the string section in 'Codes and Keys' and in 'Stay Young, Go Dancing'. We've always wanted to work with strings, but we never really found a place for it, and I'm really happy that we finally get to have some strings on an album. I feel like this is us working at our healthiest and working at our best, right now - and at our most confident. I think that we're also finally at a place in our career where there's just no looking back. We're really very happy with everything that we've accomplished and very proud of everything that we've done and I think that that confidence is sort of starting to come through everything that we're doing. I like that. CDM: Ben's vocals feel heaps like an instrument on this album, rather than just lyrics being sung. Do you feel like that additional level of emotion is something special that is part of characterizing this chapter of Death Cab For Cutie? NICK: Yeah, I think so. I think that there is where we're at in our lives. And in a lot of ways, Ben experimenting with the presentation of his voice is certainly part of that. Yeah, I think that's an accurate assessment. CDM: Chris has said that he wanted to make a "record rather than a recording" - can you elaborate on this please? NICK: I have no idea what he meant by that! <laughs> He's a little bit of a wordsmith sometimes and says things that I think are kinda a little bit 'head-scratcher'. I can only guess at what he may have meant by that, which is that I think he really wanted to make an experience of an album that has a specific signature of place and time, and really reflects where all of us are at in our band and our lives and all of that. Rather than just a group of songs that we just happened to record and put together in some random order and put out into the world. I would assume that was what he was going for, but he's a pretty curious guy sometimes, maybe he meant something completely different. So, I wouldn't want to speak for him completely.  CDM: Advance reviews of 'Codes and Keys' all discuss how the new songs seem to be united by a theme of exploring and re-defining the definition of 'home'. Do you agree or disagree? NICK: I think that's an interesting reading, those things are there for sure. I think that's the most exciting part of being in a band and making albums is - we get to make the music and we get to make the album and we get to put it out into the world and then we get to sit back and let people figure it out. It's not a big puzzle, it's not like there's a right or wrong answer to it. I'm always interested in what music means to different people. I almost am hesitant to tell people what to feel and what to think and what to look for in the music, because I want people to find that for themselves. I really want... I think the themes are obvious. I think that some themes in this music is obvious anyway, and I think some are more subtle, and some will register with people and they will quote/unquote "get it", and some people won't get it... that's what's wonderful about music in general, is that it really is a soundtrack. All music is really just a soundtrack for a life that's being lived. All of my favourite albums and albums that are still [being] released today that matter to me, all connect to some set of emotions that I'm feeling or something that I'm living and going through in my own life right now. They become very important to that - and they're mine because of that. I'm sure that some songs I love, were never intended for me to love them in the way that I do, but when they were written somebody might just say: "I just wanted to write a song that got people excited about dancing!" But, I take it as like this existential perfect expression of angst and whatever... I'm just part of making the music and playing the shows, so yeah I think that there's some themes there like you said. I'm really excited to actually have the album come out, so we can start to talk with people and hear about the kinds of things that they're discovering and connecting to in the music. CDM: When problem-solving in life, do you think more with your head or your heart? NICK: I think I think with my head too much. <sighs> I really do. I spend a lot of time upstairs, thinking about all the different moves and possibilities and outcomes, and I'm not very impulsive that way sometimes. I guess I wish sometimes I was a little more impulsive and I could just 'go for it' without having to really think things through on a lot of levels. But it's definitely a blend. I wouldn't say that it's one or the other, I would just say that it's weighed heavier on my head than it is on my heart. CDM: Having witnessed the evolution of scalpers throughout Death Cab For Cutie's career, what are your thoughts as a musician whose fans are obviously victims from the practice? NICK: Yeah, if there's one thing that's so frustrating it's exactly that. It's just <sighs> really hard to be a musician sometimes that way, people aren't really buying albums any longer and the one area that you can have a lot of control over as far as the exchange of what was happening, was the concert. As a band we set our ticket-prices and we always wanted to make them as fair and as affordable as possible, and we're very proud of the way that we've toured and how we've toured for all of the years that we have. Certainly now, scalping has changed a lot of that and made it very hard for us to just have a nice simple, easy show. It breaks my heart to hear about people buying tickets and then trying to sell them for hundreds of dollars more than a ticket to the show itself is really worth. And yet you really want everybody that wants to see the show to be able to see it. I don't know... it's just a hard thing to deal with. I don't know how that's going to work itself out, but I imagine that the government is going to get involved at some level and really start to make it a little bit more regulated, somehow. They have to, because it's really out of control in some places. We do our best to curb that, but when you get right down to it, it's actually almost impossible to really do anything to fight some of the more crafty and determined scalpers who do that. I don't know what the answer is, it's just an unfortunate part of the landscape right now that makes me very sad. CDM: Why did you decide to bestow 'Meet Me On The Equinox' on 'The Twilight Saga: New Moon' soundtrack? NICK: We've licensed songs from albums for soundtracks in the past and we've used songs in movies and stuff like that in the past, but they were always songs that were already on albums. That's the first song that we wrote and recorded and then - we didn't write it for the movie - but we recorded it and gave it as a unique track that they could have. I guess, "why not?" That's the best question. If there's one thing that... I'm not the biggest fan of those movies, but at the time, a lot of people were paying attention to that and certainly a lot of thought was going into the soundtracks that were being put together. There's a lot of great bands on all of the soundtracks, and one thing that we always try and do is look at the company that we're in, and if, in that particular case, we were like: "Well! If it's good enough for Thom Yorke it's good enough for us." <laughs> So we figured that was a good enough check! But, we try to not really think about it more than... it's just another way to share music with people. We still play that song live, we're playing it now live. It's not like - we didn't write a song for a movie and that was the only place it was going to live. If 'Twilight' hadn't come along, 'Meet Me On The Equinox' would be on 'Codes and Keys'. We love that song and we're very proud of it. But it seemed like a good place and a good home for the song to go to where people could actually enjoy it, and maybe find out about our band. So, that was the thinking behind that. Most importantly, it was just one more way to share music in places in the world that we couldn't be on tour. ...and with that, my time with Harmer is up. But, not before he thanks me - gentlemanliness runs in the band, I can vouch for this - and then parts with some last-minute comfort for New Zealand fans: "I can't wait - we are definitely, definitely pushing hard to come to New Zealand. We've never been which is really, really sad for me. I've always, always wanted to go to New Zealand. I hope that we can do it this time! We're pushing hard for it to happen." |
