Death Cab For Cutie
Frontman Ben Gibbard talks about hot actresses, cartoons, video games, and his band's latest album.
By Will Agrella & Marty Smith
Updated:
The album, the band's fourth full-length, is set to be released on October 7th and will conversely be accompanied by a six-week North American tour. In preparation for both the album's release and the tour, front man Ben Gibbard (who also spent a good chunk of early 2003 with his collaborative side project The Postal Service) has been extra busy in New York doing photo shoots and interviews and all the other dog and pony show type promotional work that comes with the territory.
IGN's own illustrious designers (who just happen to beBIG fans of Death Cab) Marty and Will recently got the chance to chat with Mr. Gibbard about life, Lassie and, of course, the new albumTransatlanticism. We also polled our readers from the message boards to find out some of the things they wanted to know.
IGN: Pop, Coke, or Soda?
Ben Gibbard: I think I say soda, but I'm not like a militant pop vs. soda [person], people that are like "this is a soda" or "that's not a pop" and hit you or something like that. Pop or soda is fine but I usually find myself saying soda and Coke is a type of soda.
IGN: Do you play Videogames?
Ben Gibbard: No, but my girlfriend four or five years ago bought me a Playstation andTony Hawk. I just can't justify sitting in one place trying to accomplish some meaningless goal. I never grew up playing video games, my parents never let me have them. If I would have had them when I was a kid, maybe I would have been more into them, but I just get really frustrated when things aren't going right and I just give up or I just want to play Tony hawk and free skate.
IGN: So you never had an Atari?
Ben Gibbard: No my parents were convinced that video games rotted your brain. They were kind of hippie parents.
IGN: Were they more into having you do physical sports or outside activities?
Ben Gibbard: I don't know. My parents never let us watch TV during the week either, so we were more [into] playing sports or just goofing around, doing whatever kids do. But essentially [we were] not playing videogames or watching TV. I look back and I'm pretty psyched that my parents told me not to. I was super bummed at the time. I feel like as lame as it might be for my kids, I'll probably do the same thing.
IGN: Did you watch Saturday morning cartoons?
Ben Gibbard: Oh yeah, I would start watching as early as possible. I would get up at six a.m. and start watching like wrestling at six in the morning until the cartoons started. It was like the low rent wrestling. There were never any matches between real people; it was always like The Strangler vs. Steve Johnson. Steve was always wearing the black trunks and got his a$$ kicked really fast. So it was never really fun to watch.
IGN: What was your last pet if you don't currently own one?
Ben Gibbard: You know I've never… the only pet that I've ever owned, I owned for like a day when I was in Jr. High. My parents got us this dog right before we were about to move from D.C. back to Seattle. They wanted us to have an animal, a companion for this trip across the country, and then getting into this city where you don't have any friends having somebody to play with I guess. But we had the dog for less than twenty-four hours and the dog cried all night long and my parents realized that it was a really bad idea and ended up taking the dog back. That was the only pet I think I ever had.
IGN: Even though you didn't have a pet, what's your opinion on pet-themed shows?
Ben Gibbard: I watched a lot ofLassie when I was a kid because we had Nickelodeon on cable. But it was always seemed so ridiculous that anybody could understand what Lassie was saying, that they always knew what was going on, like, "Oh, little Billy Smith is down in the well, we better go get him", because Lassie barks at a certain pitch. I'm all for really bad, campy shows, so if they happen to involve animals that's fine with me.
IGN: We read that you lived in San Francisco last year.
Ben Gibbard: Yeah. I was house-sitting for John Vanderslice, because he was on tour and at the time I was kind of hanging out with this girl who lived down there. I was like, 'I'll just go down and work on songs and hang out with this person.' And it turned out that I was more concerned with just writing songs and being by myself most of the time. But yeah it was awesome and so crazy to be in a place where it was sunny everyday.
IGN: Given that you spent so much time in San Francisco last year, what's your favorite restaurant in S.F.?
Ben Gibbard: Taqueria Cancun. It was so good, but the only thing was there was always just really shady stuff going on around that block because it's such a bad block. But I love that place and I'd eat there as much as I could. When we play in San Francisco we make a B-line for that place.
IGN: Since we're on the subject of food, are you a vegetarian?
Ben Gibbard: I was vegan for a number of years and then flipped off the vegetarian train like with seafood last December or so. I've been eating fish sparingly here and there but still no meat-meat.
IGN: You said in an earlier interview that your dad didn't let you listen to a lot of rock music. Do you think you strive to create music that parents will let their kids listen to?
Ben Gibbard: I don't think so. I kind of just write whatever's coming out of my head, so if that happens to be condusive to children then I don't know. It was more like when I was young andThriller came out. My parents thought there were themes in the record that were not appropriate for a young child, so I had a tape of "Beat It" like ten times in a row, but nothing else. I couldn't listen to the rest of the record, so I was really bummed.
IGN: Would you ever consider doing a song for a soundtrack?
Ben Gibbard: Absolutely, totally yeah.
IGN: What type of movie would you go for, like a big blockbuster?
Ben Gibbard: You mean like write a song for the Spiderman theme? I don't know if I'd want to write a song for Spider-Man. But I love movies and films, so if somebody came along and was like 'Hey, we want to use your song in this movie,' and it was an awesome movie, I mean sure. I wouldn't want to write the theme for Spider-Man 2, although I'm sure they're going to ask when it comes around.
IGN: What do you think of people who start dating actresses when their bands make it super big?
Ben Gibbard: What's my opinion on that? You know what's really strange is Death Cab played the Sasquatch festival out in the desert in Washington last May. We played with Neko Case, Modest Mouse, Flaming Lips, Jurassic Five and Coldplay headlined the thing. We're somewhat buddy-buddy with Wayne Coyne from Flaming Lips so we all ended up in these costumes--I don't know if you've seen the Flaming Lips in the last year or so, but everyone has on these costumes of like rabbits and bunnies and stuff like that. So, all these guys from Death Cab and all these people from Sub-Pop are dressed up and we were in the backstage area getting ready to go on and the bus pulls up and Coldplay gets off and of course Chris Martin is towing Gwyneth Paltrow through the crowd and everybody's trying to do that thing where nobody wants to look, like everything's normal, but this is probably going to be the only time that we're ever going to get to see someone like this up close. She makes her way through the crowd and back and our friend Jed that works at Sub Pop had the best quote of the entire evening, "Great, the one chance I get to meet Gwyneth Paltrow and I'm in a f@#king bunny suit."
I feel that levels of a celebrity are like similar to military rankings, you know? If you're like a movie star, that's like being an officer, but if you're a rock star, it's still like being enlisted. You can only go so high in the enlisted side of the Army. Even if you're the biggest rock-star and you're dating a movie star, even if it's a low rent movie star, you're like way lower than them. It's a weird way to date up, but you're still not ever going to be on their level.
IGN: If you were going to "date up," which actress would you choose?
Ben Gibbard: Nobody, other than my girlfriend. I think I'd be terrified. And I think that we're a pretty low-rent band so I don't think anybody would be coming after us any time soon.
IGN: The new album and the title track have a theme of distance and separation between people. How do you handle keeping up relationships through long distances while on tour?
Ben Gibbard: Yeah, that was a theme working on the record. It's really hard to do that. We live this crazy life that I'll be like 'Holy Sh!t, this is not normal, what we do is not normal.' But it's become so second nature to us that it's like 'Oh yeah, this year I'm going to spend six months in a van, making dick and fart jokes and I'm going to play rock shows and drink whiskey.' And sometimes when you come home it's like, well you grow with people when you share similar experiences, so when we spend all of our time out here doing this, it's hard to relate to people back home that don't relate to what you do. It's hard, It's really hard. It helps to have a significant other that realizes that when we go on tour it's not like Motley Crew. I mean we just go and play shows, we're just normal dudes. It's difficult but it's part of the package.
IGN: Do you think technology has made it easier to remain close to loved ones; no matter how much physical distance separates them?
Ben Gibbard: I think so, yeah, having a cell phone in the states I've probably spent an hour a day with my girlfriend on the last Death Cab and Postal Service tours. I just want to talk to her, she's f@#king hilarious. I just want to talk to her and tell her our crazy stories and she'll tell me crazy stories about what happened at home. It makes it okay when you can talk to someone through email and cell phones, but nothing can make up for physical closeness.
IGN: Do you think that the recent blackouts on the East Coast that exiled people from everyday conveniences opened their eyes to what we take for granted?
Ben Gibbard: I think so. Everybody that I've talked to here who's in the middle of these blackouts have said that it's the best f@#king thing that's happened. We have some friends that were telling us that 'Yeah, everyone's pulling food out of their fridge because they can't keep it cold.' So people are bar-b-qing in the streets. Sushi restaurants were serving pot-stickers in the street for a dollar with a Coke. People just out in the streets just hanging out, realizing they won't get this opportunity again to go wild.
That's one thing that I've noticed, not being somebody that's spent a whole lot of time in New York, it just seems that this place, especially in the last couple of years, even though it's the biggest city in the world, that people are more connected here than anywhere else, more than any other city that I've ever been to. It's pretty amazing how people interact here.
IGN: Do you have plans for another big double-header tour like the Death & Dismemberment tour?
Ben Gibbard: Umm, I wish we could do it but we don't have anything planned. It makes me sad that Dismemberment Plan are no more. We had a really good time doing a tour where we were out with another band that we were co-headlining with. It takes the pressure off. You're sharing the weight of the show with someone else. But it also makes you feel a bit lazy when you're not getting out there and playing for two hours when you've got to play an hour and fifteen because you have another band doing the same thing. But we had a great time and if we found another band that we felt connected enough to, personally and musically, then that would maybe be a good option, we could maybe do it. We're going out in the fall and we're doing our own tour and this time we're only bringing one opening band. It'll be really nice with the new record and as the catalog gets bigger we want to play for longer and longer and really do a real show.
IGN: Will you ever do a cover of "Private Eyes"?
Ben Gibbard: I hope so. We got to get some Hall and Oates kickin'. "Private Eyes" is great. I love that track.
IGN: Hey, now we're going to hit you with some fan questions from the boards. The first one is: You mentioned an EP that you planned on doing with Bright Eyes this year. Is that still going to happen?
Ben Gibbard: I think that is most likely not going to happen. Not because it's not something we'd be interested in, but it's been something we've been talking about with Conor like three and a half years ago, and it's the kind of thing that if it's been this long... Plus we are all kind of busy with our own stuff. Ya'know Conor's really busy as well. I mean not to say that it will never happen, but there's no release schedule for something like that.
IGN: What ever happened to the tour DVD that was supposed come out this Christmas?
Ben Gibbard: We kind of got to this point with that where we had somebody on tour filming a lot of stuff and for a number of reasons not only was that tour not really a very good tour for us, we kind of had a lot of internal problems on the tour and the tour turned out to be not as celebratory of a blow-out tour that we wanted it to be. So that was one reason and another is that by the time we got home and looked at the footage we realized that number one, we're a pretty boring f@#king band. Like nothing really happened on the tour and there wasn't enough footage to make anything that would be worth watching. If that makes any sense. So, I think what we've kind of decided to do is keep all the footage, shelve all the footage we have, and as we continue to film stuff and continue to be a band, kind of look at it more like maybe in 5 years we can do something that's actually worth watching. Something that chronicles the growth of the band over a number of years and not just 5 weeks on the road.
IGN: Has your work with Postal Service impacted your latest Death Cab album?
Ben Gibbard: Yeah, there's obviously going to be a little bleed over, just because I'm singing and writing for both. Where the cross over occurs most is just in learning to use new toys with Postal Service and attacking music from a different angle. It allows me to look at the creation of a Death Cab song somewhat differently.
IGN: What music have you been listening to lately?
Ben Gibbard: In the last six to eight months I've been really getting into Brian Eno and listening to any Brian Eno ambient record that I can find. There's something really soothing, I just like the textures and the moods created when you remove what has historically been everything I've listened to, like melody and lyrics. A lot of ambient and pop stuff. In the last month or so I've been totally obsessed with the B-52s like old B-52s, I just think that stuff is so much fun. It's so dances in a carefree way that I just deny it.
IGN: What do you think about the mp3s leaking of your new album? Do you think it'll help or hurt sales?
Ben Gibbard: I think it's a good thing, if anything I like the idea of normal people getting a chance to hear it before it comes out. And if the general consensus is that it's a good record that just means people will get more excited about it when it comes out on the day it comes out. There will be people that want to burn the record and not pay for it. I think there's far more people especially who would be buying a record by a band like ours who want to have the record, want the artwork and lyrics and credits. I think it's a good thing. I mean, I think it's unfortunate when somebody takes a promo and puts it on Ebay. I think that's really f@#cking lame. I like giving music to people early who aren't just music journalists.
IGN: Are there any extra tracks or B-sides?
Ben Gibbard: When we went in to the record we had maybe twenty-five songs and we whittled that down to twelve that we recorded. And the record ended up being at eleven. So there's one song that has yet to be fully completed. So there aren't any plans to have a full EP or anything like that in a conjunction with the record or directly after. I think we are planning on doing more sessions in the near future but what that will sprout up is still to be determined.
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