Sound of Settling

Bellingham, WA's Death Cab for Cutie have seen many changes in a relatively short time; not the least g being perpetual shifts in personnel behind the drum kit. The combination of frontman Ben Gibbard's percolating melodies and insightfully witty lyrics with guitarist Chris Walla's production and recording chops may have had something to do with their sharp rise in notoriety. Having a steady drummer, apparently less-so. When the band eventually found Mike Schorr, from the interviews Gibbard and company gave, it seemed like a match made in heaven; which made it all the more unexpected when after two-and-a-half years, Schorr was unceremoniously dismissed and replaced with Jason McGerr just prior to Death Cab recording their latest album, Transatlanticism. A band can be a volatile environment, and the Synthesis discovered how so when they spoke with Gibbard about Schorr's dismissal and the Baltimore, MD, fight that nearly spelled the collapse of Death Cab.

So, how's [your new drummer] Jason McGerr working out?
Oh, super good, just perfect, he's the perfect man for the job. We've known him for so long, and we're going into working with him with mutual admiration and respect. I've been able to talk drumming with him better than virtually everyone else that we've ever played with. As a drummer [myself] - obviously not of the same caliber, but a drummer nonetheless - it's good to kinda get what we want out of him and for him to be able to contribute and not feel like his creativity is being stifled by us making our own requests and constructive criticisms about how he's doing what he does.

I can't help but bring up that you were really stoked on Mike Schorr when he first joined the fold. Why and when did this change happen?
Michael is a phenomenal drummer. It's one of those things where there wasn't a moment that happened that made us realize that we didn't want to play with him anymore, it was just kind of a slow burn. When we started working with Michael, he had a great grasp and feel of the material that was at hand - he'd pick up the stuff really fast and we got along really well, and it seemed that we'd really found something that would work for us.
I think as we continued playing with him, we just kind of realized that we just weren't jelling creatively, and some of that came out in the making of The Photo Album. We just found it difficult to work with him in the manner that we felt would be pushing the band into some areas that we wanted to grow in, and were met with some creative opposition. I think that more than anything else, along with some somewhat personal reasons that aren't necessarily bad - no stories about people cheating with other people's girlfriends, nothing like that - just some small personal things, and just as with every relationship, be it friendship or romantic or musical, there's just a point where the honeymoon's over and you realize that you maybe didn't have as much in common as you thought you did. It's really kind of a musical version of "it's not you, it's me."

So do you think he harbors any ill will, or ill feelings?
We're not really speaking right now. I see him on the street every once in a while and we stop to say hello but he doesn't seem to have an interest in being our friend, which is understandable. When you get removed from a band at, like, the height of the popularity of the group, at the time it's not an easy thing to deal with. I just have a hope that maybe someday we can get a beer again and be friends. I think that time will come, I think it's just a matter of everything leveling out. Then again, he may never want to be our friend again. That's unfortunate because I really like him a lot as a person, but we just reached a point creatively where we couldn't move on with him in the band, and we had to make a change.

During The Photo Album tour, it seemed like you guys were very close to breaking up; you weren't getting along, from accounts I've heard. How close were you to just throwing in the towel?
We had a really big blowout on tour. During the recording [of The Photo Album] there was kinda a black cloud over the sessions, but nothing at the time that I perceived as being a problem. I felt that we had spent so much time on tour [prior to recording] and we were making a record because we felt like we had to make a record, to have a record to be on tour with next fall.
We had a really bad blowout on that tour where we played in Baltimore and after the show we had this tremendous fight on the way to the hotel in the van. It was really the kind of fight where you don't expect someone to be in the hotel the next day. You expect them to have gotten a cab, gone to the airport and flown home. But then we woke up and everyone was still there, and we were playing in [Washington] DC the next day. Nobody slept 'cause everyone was just completely emotionally drained, it was a really difficult 48 hours or so. But then once everyone cooled off, it was almost like that needed to happen.
You have to have those moments with people, especially when you're in a band, when you're like, crammed in a fucking van or a studio all the time - where you just let it all out, and once you let it all out you realize that these people are really important to me, this is the most important thing, and we need to keep doing this, I love doing this, all the pressure and the craziness of being a band can kinda reach a fever-pitch sometime. After that point everything got really good and has been great ever since because we got that close, and once we pulled back and realized what we had, it was like, this is the worst time to get off the train, we need to see where this thing's going. And we all really love each other as people, it's just a matter of sometimes shit just gets crazy when you're jammed together for so long.

So what's in store next? How much of a future do you have with Death Cab for Cutie?
As with any relationship, you never know what curveball life or relations are gong to throw at you, but I can say that, honestly, I feel more a part of a band that's going to continue on in the future than I ever have before. There were times since the first record where I was just waiting for something to go wrong, always bracing myself for the phone call where someone decides they don't want to do it any more, or whatever. And then you have a big blowout where everyone realizes why this is so important to them. I'm really excited to see what kind of records we make from here on out.

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