These Songs With Chords

Transatlanticism (Barsuk) is the newest and best album from Seattle indie rockers Death Cab for Cutie, the album the bandsinger/guitarist Ben Gibbard, multi-instrumentalist and producer Christopher Walla, bassist Nick Harmer, and drummer Michael Schorrhave been working steadily toward since forming in Bellingham six years ago. After the cassette-only You Can Play These Songs With Chords (reissued on CD last year) caught Northwest scenesters' ears, Death Cab began gigging locally, eventually relocating to Seattle. Their next three releases1998's Something About Airplanes, 2000's We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes and the EP Forbidden Lovefleshed out their initial chiming, drifting sound. 2001's The Photo Album was an even bigger leap forward, with Gibbard's lyrics abandoning some of their head-in-the-clouds feel for a tougher outlook; the standout cut, "Styrofoam Plates," is a painful but clear-eyed look back at an absentee father who "disgrace[d] the concept of family."

Transatlanticism is even more muscular, with particular emphasis given to Walla's guitar work. Gibbard has evolved into one of indie rock's most soulful vocalists, and his lyrics have shed much pretense to their earlier lovelornness, from his looking through a hole in a woman's dress in "Lightness" to the moment in "Tiny Vessels" that "You told her that you loved her but you don't/You touch her skin and then you think/That she is beautiful but she don't mean a thing to me."

Just as importantly, in February Gibbard and electronic producer Jimmy Tamborello, aka Dntel, released Give Up (Sub Pop) under the name the Postal Service. Anyone who's heard that album's "Nothing Better"a deliberate answer record to the Human League's 1982 synth-pop hit, "Don't You Want Me"as well as Death Cab's B-side cover of Bj�s "All Is Full of Love" is aware that Gibbard and Walla are keen-eared, widely knowledgeable music fans. The Jukebox took place in the Weekly offices on a Saturday afternoon shortly before Death Cab's fall tour.

Jonathan Richman: "I Was Dancing in the Lesbian Bar" (1992) from I, Jonathan (Rounder)

Christopher Walla: I love Jonathan Richman.

Ben Gibbard: Me, too.

Walla: Have you ever met him before?

Seattle Weekly: No. He seems like a weird guy. I saw him outside a club in New York, pacing. He has a very serious demeanor by himself, and when he gets onstage, he's a kid.

Gibbard: I saw him on that PBS documentary on the history of rock a few years ago, and the way he talks, he sounds like a complete drug casualty, but I don't think he ishe has songs about not doing drugs and championing straightedge. I like Jonathan Richman for the same reason I like Jad Fair. They strip all the art out of music and have it be really to the point. They can sing about anything, the sillier the better.

SW: Do you ever try that yourself? Some of your lyrics have been fairly fantastical. The Death Cab stuff, especially on The Photo Album, is very straightforward, but the Postal Service and some parts of Transatlanticism are kind of whimsical.

Gibbard: I just bought the Jad Fair/ Teenage Fanclub record. I love it. I can listen to Jad Fair and Half Japanese in small doses. I sometimes think it would be really funny to have a song like [sings] "He's got McDonald's on the brain" or something like that, something kind of silly. But I think that kind of overly earnest thing only works when you have that kind of delivery. Jad Fair boils things down to very simple elements. I don't think that would work with me.

Santana featuring Michelle Branch: "The Game of Love" (2002) from Shaman (Arista)

Walla: I know this song! That's Carlos and . . . Gwen Stefani? No, Michelle Branch. [Branch hits song's signature high note.] That note is so Auto-Tuned. I have to confess, I really love some Carlos Santana songs. It's a good song, and I feel like I almost have to put up my dukes whenever I say that.

Gibbard: Yeah, I'm feeling this.

SW: People act like there's a major difference between writing pop songs in a four-piece rock band and putting them out on an indie label and something like this.

Walla: And there really isn't.

Gibbard: Chris and I have always been pop radio fans. More than ever, I just refuse to ever deny myself this kind of thing just because it happens to be on pop radio.

Walla: When I did a guest DJ spot on KEXP in the middle of the night, I threw on a song from the Justin Timberlake record, "Like I Love You." You wouldn't believe how many really angry e-mails we got at 3 in the morning. It was so insane. That song rocks! It's so cool.

SW: It seems like there's not that much openness to an all-music aesthetic in Seattleit's very compartmentalized.

Gibbard: Totally. I think everybody goes through a phase, usually when they're younger, where they want to identify with one style of music and wall off a lot of other music. And there's a point where they admit they like something they were ashamed of before. It kind of opens the floodgates.