Death Cab for Cutie, new album coming soon

Death Cab for Cutie have announced their eleventh studio album: “I Built You A Tower” will be released on June 5th on ANTI-Records. The album was produced and recorded by John Congleton and was made in three weeks of sessions between the Animal Rites studios in Los Angeles and the band members’ homes in Seattle, Bellingham, Los Angeles and Portland. Ben Gibbard said

It’s an album about loss and the ways we try, ultimately unsuccessfully, to compartmentalize grief. We compartmentalize because we need to stay compact in order to work, raise our children, etc. But the structures we build within ourselves to keep pain at bay have limited endurance. Eventually, the pain overflows and we are forced to face it. And sometimes it’s more than we can bear.

Along with the album announcement, the band released their first single, “Riptides.” “’Riptides’ is about the challenge of facing personal hardship while the world around us witnesses unimaginable tragedy and loss, and how when those two things cross paths in our minds, it feels completely paralyzed,” said Gibbard.

The band also announced a tour, which includes dates in Europe next fall – but no Italy.
“I Built You A Tower” will be the band’s first work for ANTI-Records, a historic independent label from Los Angeles whose roster includes, among others, Tom Waits, Mavis Staples, Neko Case, Fleet Foxes and Waxahatchee. The move to the label marks a return to an independent label after more than twenty years with Atlantic Records, which began with 2005’s “Plans”, after the end of the contract with Seattle’s Barsuk Records, which had released the group’s first four albums.

“We’re thrilled to join Anti’s roster, which includes some of our favorite artists, old friends and, in many cases, both,” Gibbard said upon signing. “We can’t wait to start this new chapter with the wonderful staff at Anti and share our work with you.”

Of the previous album, “Asphalt meadows” (2022), we wrote:

a band capable of giving themselves new impetus, even when they have now had 25 years of honored career, all spent in the name of a stylistic independence and attitude that has ended up being a true trademark. A sign that certain vibrations are not so fleeting after all.