1/4/12

Death Cab for Cutie is sustaining a wonderful career, starting off a little known West Coast indie group and becoming one of the bands that made indie maintstream again. Avid use of DCFC songs in TV and movies - The O.C. and Twilight come to mind - certainly helped spread them to new audiences, but I remember adoring them in my early high school years, with my then-boyfriend burning me mixes of their entire discography to date when I couldn't find the CDs locally.

They haven't lost their aptitude for true storytelling, setting scenes and giving insight into what goes on in the mind when confronting a moment. Often reflective, selectively pessimistic, they were ironic and hipster long before it was trendy. I do hope that as the decades pass Death Cab is given their due.

This song, "Photobooth," transports listeners to a time and a day when lust meant love, when hard edges were inviting, and when meaning was found in the meaningless if only for the novelty.

"I remember when the days were long,
And the nights when the living room was on the lawn.
Constant quarreling, the childish fits, and our clothes in a pile on the ottoman.
All the slander and double-speak
Were only foolish attempts to show you did not mean
Anything but the blatant proof was your lips touching mine in the photobooth.

And as the summer's ending,
The cool air will put your hard heart away.
You were so condescending..
And this is all that's left:
Scraping paper to document.
I've packed a change of clothes and it's time to move on.

Cup your mouth to compress the sound,
Skinny dipping with the kids from a nearby town.
And everything that I said was true,
As the flashes blinded us in the photobooth.
Well, I lost track, and then those words were said.
You took the wheel and you steered us into my bed.
Soon we woke and I walked you home,
And it was pretty clear that it was hardly love.

And as the summer's ending,
The cool air will rush your hard heart away.
You were so condescending.
And this is all that's left:
Scraping paper to document.
I've packed a change of clothes and it's time to move on.

And as the summer's ending,
The cool air will rush your hard heart away.
You were so condescending,
As the alcohol drained the days.

And as the summer's ending,
The cool air will rush your hard heart away.
You were so condescending.
And this is all that's left:
The empty bottles, spent cigarettes.
So pack a change of clothes, 'cause it's time to move on."
~Photobooth
Death Cab for Cutie, Forbidden Love EP