Review Summary: Time passed and that was that
Some, I think, will be disappointed to find that
Asphalt Meadows doesn’t quite live up to the promise of ‘Roman Candles’. Nor, exactly, does it fulfil that promise. Released all the way back in May, ‘Roman Candles’ was met with near-universal praise, whetting the appetites of fans of Death Cab for Cutie, and stoking a renewed sense of excitement for the future of the band. So, too, has
Asphalt Meadows been met with considerable praise from (most) fans and critics in the week following its release. But most unlike ‘Roman Candles’ which, with its dirty, distorted kick and menacing spurts of guitar, promised something altogether new from the band,
Asphalt Meadows as it stands sounds a lot like what one might (hope to) expect from Death Cab for Cutie in 2022.
This, though, and more. Because regardless of one’s criticisms of contemporary Death Cab for Cutie – whether that be in its post-Walla
Kintsugi period, or from some even earlier point – it’s clear that the band has retained throughout this period a significant part of its early DNA. And what the band does on
Asphalt Meadows is that it manages not only to reuse portions of that DNA – acknowledging and taking account of what made its music so good and affecting in the first place – but to repurpose that same DNA to great and new and exciting effect.
Take opener ‘I Don’t Know How I Survive’, for example, whose thin, rubbery guitar and cloyingly sweet handclaps are more reminiscent of
Thank You for Today than
Plans. But which, with a five-second wave of distortion in its chorus, jolts us right the *** back to the
We Have the Facts era, before returning us once more to the song's earlier sweetness, and weaving a gorgeous array of beeps and bloops and other sounds into its increasingly dense, increasingly beautiful soundscape. If not that, then the exceptional ‘Foxglove Through the Clearcut’, which serves as the album’s centrepiece, and in doing so reaches for
Transatlanticism levels of catharsis whilst also doing things the band has never done before. Atop an unfolding swirl of steady drums and muted guitar warbles, Gibbard delves into spoken word, spinning a narrative about a man living at the edge of America.
As ever, Gibbard’s lyrics betray a preoccupation with themes of distance and modernity, precarity and flux. Moreover, on
Asphalt Meadows, the Death Cab frontman is concerned with what it means to come to terms with the past, both individually and as a society – and what it takes to move forward. To this end, the sound of
Asphalt Meadows – taking the old, and imbuing it with the new – provides fertile ground for the exploration of Gibbard’s particular concerns.
And yet,
Asphalt Meadows feels far less cohesive (thematically) as an album than, say,
Transatlanticism, whose own songs acted as building blocks towards a final sense of catharsis.
Asphalt Meadows, by contrast, feels fragmented, each song offering its own unique moment of epiphany and transformation. This is good and bad. On the one hand, it allows the band to continue down the road of subtle reinvention that characterised much of its early career – this without having to commit to the ambition of a ‘concept album’. On the other, it lends itself to a song like ‘I’ll Never Give Up on You’ which, despite closing out the album, has the effect of deflating whatever conclusion the rest of the songs – particularly ‘Fragments From the Decade’, the penultimate track, and the earlier title track – appeared to have been building towards. Sonically, the song makes sense, marrying a much-needed poppiness and levity to the harsher, more apocalyptic tones of Congleton's production. And indeed, it's easy to imagine the credits rolling. Gibbard’s lyrics, though – his extended ‘Gave up on [x], but I’ll never give on you’ – along with the repetitiveness of the song’s chorus lend themselves far better to a single than any kind of closer.
Still – despite this fragmentation, and despite the fact that, contrary to what ‘Roman Candles’ might have suggested for the album, Death Cab for Cutie’s most ‘experimental’ album in decades is also one of their most streamlined –
Asphalt Meadows showcases some of the band’s best tendencies. The album is – by turns – fun, sad, lethargic, exciting, and genuinely stirring. A demonstration not only of what the band has done, but what it can do. And as good an example as any that streamlining one’s sound does not always mean losing inspiration. In this way,
Asphalt Meadows not only lives up to but truly, actually fulfils the promise of Death Cab for Cutie – of music not always new, or unique, or 'experimental', but always, always genuine, and always, always packed with emotion.
