Review Summary: Flood.
I look at
Plans as a representation of a simpler time in my life. I was just beginning high school. I still hadn’t quite figured out myself just yet. I was getting there, but there were some things about myself I didn’t understand. Some words I had yet to associate with myself. My music taste was that of my father’s; Tool, System of a Down. I had already figured out that these bands were only the beginning of my obsession with heavier music. I ventured to YouTube to feed my hunger for heavier music. And it was all there. Whole albums posted without a care for copyright. I’d sit at my laptop for hours listening to records while doing some menial task. Usually not homework. But
Plans associates itself with more tender moments than it does menial moments. I chuckle whenever I think about it, because it’s only fair huh.
That an album with such beautiful emotional capacity represents a growing period in my life.
I use the word flood simply to associate the flood of feelings and memories I associate with the entirety of the album. It seemed I couldn’t go a day without listening to it. This was far before I delved further into an artist’s discography. All I had to go from was this mesmerising… I’m crying now. It’s all coming back to me. All these simple memories of self-discovery. Finding myself to be not everything I thought I would be. ‘Summer Skin’ prompts it. That simple piano line as the snare chugs along. Ben Gibbard has such a simple but soulful way of expressing everything he ever wanted;
Cause’ the seasons change was a conduit/And we’d left our love in our summer skin. It all brings a smile to my face. Even that overplayed, dumb ‘I Will Follow You Into The Dark’. I still hate that song so much. But I always sing it when I’m feeling lonely. I always saw it as words soon to mean so much more. I saw
Plans as soon to mean so much more.
And I mean, it did. But not entirely how I expected.
Songs like ‘What Sarah Said’ or ‘Brothers on a Hotel Bed’ perhaps will never mean what they’re supposed to. But there’s something that gets me when Ben croons
So who’s gonna watch you die? on the former or the direct delivery of
You may tire of me/As our December sun is setting/Cause I’m not who I used to be on the latter. His soothing vocal delivery, continuously matched by subtle instrumentals, completely ruin me every time. These songs are a contrast to earlier in the album; not danceable, or even able to be triumphantly sung. Rather, it crushes the momentum of the album. But, surprisingly, it feels soothing. I’ve dragged myself through all these happy emotions, just to be reminded it isn’t all perfect.
Maybe that’s why
Plans still has that effect it had on me all those years ago. This association with the past plays in the present. Sure, it never really stood tall next to
Transatlanticism, but I mean, how could it?
Plans was my first Death Cab album. It’s an album that achieves a sense of beauty in sadness, all the while catering to a larger audience. But for me, it’s the perfect transcription of a not-so-perfect series of moments in my life. And personally, that means more to me than anything else. The flood of emotions I have every time I play it through.
5/5
