3 Death Cab For Cutie Songs That Got You Through High School

Death Cab For Cutie has released its latest studio album, I Built You A Tower. Led by singer and songwriter Ben Gibbard, the indie rock legends are nearly 30 years removed from their debut album, Something About Airplanes. Since then, the band helped define early 2000s indie rock with emotionally wrought lyrics built atop wit and melancholy.

Depending on your age, Death Cab For Cutie might have been the soundtrack of your youth. And these tracks likely got you through the awkward chapter of high school.

“The New Year”

An overarching theme of Transatlanticism is distance. While distance is a feeling, it’s also something measurable, like time. “The New Year” describes a sad New Year’s Eve party. But the narrator doesn’t feel any different at midnight. For many, the calendar flip offers a chance to start anew. And if everyone around you seems hopeful and you don’t, then that’s just another kind of remoteness.

I wish the world was flat like the old days,
Then I could travel just by folding a map.
No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways,
There’d be no distance that could hold us back.

“Soul Meets Body”

The success of Transatlanticism led to a major-label deal with Atlantic Records. Death Cab For Cutie released Plans in 2005, and with its success, the indie band had fully entered the mainstream. On “Soul Meets Body”, Gibbard sings searchingly about want, destination, hope. It feels like the other side of the sentiment in “The New Year”. The Chris Walla-produced track propels forward. It’s kinetic, empowering, optimistic. However, much anxiety remains in Gibbard’s voice. All this talk about hope exists on tenuous circumstances. It could fall apart at any time.

And I do believe it’s true,
That there are roads left in both of our shoes.
But if the silence takes you, then I hope it takes me too.

“I Will Follow You Into The Dark”

Gibbard is known for writing emotionally vivid lyrics. In one of his best songs, he speaks to his partner about death. But instead of being reassembled in some kind of afterlife, chances are that only darkness awaits them. In Catholic school, a nun strikes him and explains that fear is a virtue. So he never returns. He knows he’ll die someday and finds comfort in tumbling toward the unknown while clutched in the arms of a loved one.

If Heaven and Hell decide that they both are satisfied,
Illuminate the “Noes” on their vacancy signs,
If there’s no one beside you when your soul embarks,
Then I’ll follow you into the dark.

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