Death Cab For Cutie - The Photo Album : The Perfect Picture

Death Cab For Cutie - The Photo Album (2001)

A while back I wrote an entry about bands, I wish I liked more than I do. The entry was to show how much I did appreciate their talent and respective places in music history. Unfortunately, is caused the drummer of one of the bands to curse me out on Twitter. I didn’t know whether to be upset or complimented that they took my opinion so personally. It felt kind of like when John Travolta's Rolling Stone writer character in “Perfect”, ran into Carly Simon who pissed about a story he wrote in the magazine about her, tosses her drink in his face.

 

Anyway, there are a few bands out there that I also only really like one album. I’m not saying there aren't other songs the group has done off other albums I enjoy. Just when it comes to complete albums, only one really holds my ears' attention.

 

Some band’s albums which may fit this category:

 The Flaming Lips 1990 In A Priest Driven Ambulance the Suicide Machine’s 2000 Self-Titled, where they dropped most the horns”,

Another one that particularly sticks out because I listen to it so much would be Death Cab For Cutie’s 2001 The Photo Album.

In their first album Something About Airplanes the band still has a very Built To Spill influence on their sounds. Ben Gibbard’s voice even resembles Doug Martsch’s voice. The songs even have a few Built To Spill-ish signature time changes. “Fake Frowns” is a very good song but if I heard it without knowing was performing the song, I would have assumed it was Built To Spill. The band’s guitarist Chris Walla’s production also does not help the album. The music and lyrics sound jumbled together with the drums sounding particularly harsh. Again, I understand this is the band’s first album, so this is understandable.

 

The second album 2000’s We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Against the band has really worked out its sound. The album does have a couple good songs in “405” and “Company Calls”, but the production, again by Chris Walla, still has the music and vocals a little too muddy for my tastes. Looking back, it’s a little bit of a shame since once the Doug Martsch similarities were gone singer Ben Gibbard would soon have one of the best and most discernable voices in rock music, first really noticed in “Employment Pages” at track 2. At least the drums are less harsh.

 

At this point I almost gave up on the band. But I am glad I didn’t. In the fall of 2001, I moved the New York City, soon finding a record store just a few blocks from my job. The store, where I bought and traded so many CDs for the next 19 years, was called Academy Records. The first CD I bought from them was Death Cab For Cutie’s The Photo Album.

 Almost right away you can hear a big improvement on the band’s sound. Again Chris Walla is at the controls, but he must have been practicing. On the album opener “Steadier Footing” you can hear singer Ben Gibbard’s voice perfectly along with the guitar. This quiet and slow song serves as a great introduction to the album. It’s almost as if the protagonist is settling in before going to sleep and dreaming the rest of the album. Some of the lyrics like “It's gotten late and now I want to be alone; all of our friends were here; they all have gone home” help create this imagery. Or perhaps the person is first waking up to take on the day like some lyrics in later songs on the album may prove.

“A Movie Script Ending” and “We Laugh Indoors” at Track Two and Three are more great examples of the much better production. You can hear the drum, bass, guitars, and of course, Gibbard’s now all his own sounding vocals perfectly. As a matter of fact, over the course of the whole album, the vocals and instruments are perfectly balanced. I recommend listening with a good pair of headphones to receive the full effect.

Track 5 “Why Would You Want To Live Here”  about Los Angeles is one of the biggest highlights of the album. The song explains all the things like “freeways creeping”, smog which may cause trouble breathing, “thickening shrouds of egos”, or star maps which are “never current”. The perfect speed-up, and distorted bridge where a now stressed-out Gibbard sings “The vessel keeps pumping us through this entropic place,

In the belly of the beast that is Californ-I-A, I drank from a faucet

and kept my receipts for when they weigh me on the way out, here nothing is free. but the greyhounds keep coming, dumping locusts on the street. Til the gutters overflow and Los Angeles Thinks” also made me realize I made the right choice in moving to New York rather than “The City of Angels or Demons”. Especially since it probably would have been the Greyhound that got me out there. This is definitely my favorite song on the album, maybe in my Top-50 songs of All-Time and it always amazes me it wasn’t a single.

"Blacking Out The Friction", the single "I Was A Kaleidoscope", and "Styrofoam Plates" follow before we come to another song that may fall into that Top-50 at well. 

"Coney Island" at Track 9 is sheer perfection. Only two minutes long its music and lyrics totally relay the history of the past greatness of the attractions and the joy which they would bring in the upcoming summer. All while sitting and admiring the calmness of the offseason. The song has a similar feel to "Ghostown" by The Specials, but unlike that song, this one is positive since the attractions would be opening up again in a few months. This song, as well as Joseph Heller's "Now and Then: From Coney Island to Here" which I had just read, made me eager to go to Coney Island in the upcoming summer. At this point, I had only seen it from the Belt Parkway while driving back and forth from school. 

Over the course of the next 17 or so years, Death Cab For Cutie would release another seven albums. All, of course, are very good. There are many songs on them like "New Years" of 2003's Transatanticsm, "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" of 2005's Plans, or "I Will Possess Your Heart" and "No Sunlight" off 2008's Narrows which I love and will listen too over repeatedly and put on a mix for years to come. When it comes to a whole album from start to finish, The Photo Album will stand alone. 

To end on a positive note in an effort not to have a member of the band curse me out on social media, Ben Gibbard's 2003 Postal Service "project" or anything he does solo will always be in my heavy rotation. I highly recommend checking out his cover of the whole Teenage Fanclub Bandwagonesque album, including a song focused on in this blog just a few entries ago. 

Here is an Unofficial "Coney Island" video with classic Coney Island scenes:

"The Last Lemonheads Album" - Lovey 30 Years On

The Lemonheads are my second favorite band, right behind The Descendents/ALL at number one. Like I said in my blog entry for their third album Lick here, this includes the whole package. Everything under the band's name from their Laughing All The Way To The Cleaners debut 7", to the two recent covers albums. 

But there are a couple of different "eras" of the band.

When Evan Dando, Ben Deily, and Jesse Peretz formed the band they chose their name because like the candy they were self-proclaimed "sweet on the inside and sour on the outside". Melodic hooks surrounded by punk noise. 

Soon they were on Boston's TAANG! Records and recording the album Hate Your Friends, Evan, and Ben switching off vocals. For their second album Creator, the band picked up Corey Loog Brennan from their labelmates Bullet Lavolta, and the classic Lemonheads lineup was in place. 

This is where the band really shined, winning me over when I first heard their sweet and sour cover of Suzanne Vega’s “Luka” off their third album Lick on MTV's 120 Minutes.

In the summer of 1990, I would be able to pick up my first brand-new Lemonheads album. This time on a major label Atlantic Records.

Somewhere in between Lick and the upcoming album Deily left the band. Evan Dando would now be the sole singer of the band. He really took the opportunity and ran with it.  

When I picked up the album I was happy to see the duo of Paul Q Kolderie and Sean Slade at the production controls. They had just done an incredible job on Uncle Tupelo’s debut which was just a few weeks earlier. Plus, there was the Lemonheads' fellow Massachusetts band Dinosaur Jr's Bug album Kolderie and Slade recorded just a few years earlier.  

Pressing play on the CD player you could hear their influence almost right away on the first three tracks in “Ballarat”, with its wall of noise guitars with Blake Babie's Juliana Hatfield screaming along. and driving guitar fuzz of “Year of the Cat” and “Half the Time” at tracks 2 and 3.  

  

“Ride with Me” slows it down. It is good to hear a Lemonhead's slower songs like “Don’t Tell Yourself” off Hate Your Friends or “Out” off of Creator with a little more hefty production.

After some straight-ahead hard rock in “Litl’ Seed”, comes the perfect example of Kolderie/Slade production in the revved-up and fuzz-filled metaphor of the replacement of a kitchen appliance in “Stove”. For a rougher version of this song check out the soundtrack to the 1990 movie A Matter of Degrees which also features songs by fIREHOSE, Miracle Legion, Grant Hart’s post-Husker Du band Nova Mob, Alice Chilton, Yo La Tengo, the before mentioned Uncle Tupelo and more.  

A couple loud and fast numbers in “Come Downstairs” and “Left for Dead”(a redo of “Clang Bang Clang” off Creator), before the album's only acoustic number “Brass Buttons” (almost) closes out the album. The song is a cover of a Gram Parsons song off his 1974 Grievous Angel album which I would soon be searching out. 

The 5:30 minute heavy metal influenced “(The) Door” closes out the album.   

So why do I refer to Lovey as the “Last Lemonheads album”?  

In a way it was.  

After Lovey bassist, Jesse Peretz would exit the band leaving Evan Dando as the only original member. Peretz would go on to be pretty successful in photography and film, even directing the video for The Lemonheads' cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Mrs. Robinson”  

Corey Loog Brennan also exited the band

The Lemonheads would not really be a band. Now they were an Evan Dando vehicle.  

It's A Shame About Ray line-up, Dave Ryan, Julianna Hatfield, Evan Dando

Don’t get me wrong, Evan put out some of his best stuff post-Lovey and I love all of it. But with the breakthrough, It’s a Shame About Ray, and the power/pop-influenced Come On Feel The Lemonheads the band had a revolving door of members. The before mentioned Juliana Hatfield plays bass on only It’s a Shame About Ray. 1996's Car Button Cloth has numerous different musicians on it. The Descendents Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez took up the drums and bass for the 2006 self-titled release but by the time I saw The Lemonheads on tour for that album, they were both long gone. 

I did get to see the Lovey line-up of The Lemonheads in 1990 at the old 9:30 Club while on tour for this album and they were awesome. 

From 1994 to 2009, I saw The Lemonheads dozens of times. They were great almost every time but each show was Evan and a whole new band. 

 Plus, the Robb Brother production on those two post-Lovey albums took the sour part, the noise, out of the equation, leaving us with just the sweet.

Again I love the whole picture of the band and listen to each album almost equally. But when I listen to those first four albums I am reminded of that sweet and sour sound that blew me away when I first heard the band that late Sunday night on 120 Minutes. 

Here is the official video of "Half the Time" off of Lovey, which honestly I am not sure I ever saw before.