Plans

By: Death Cab For Cutie

Reviewed by: Keith Balmer

Time Will Tell

Solid stuff

I could apologize for being a fan and be hyper-critical and jaded in order to prove to people reading the review that I am not being jaded, or I could just give you my honest opinions about what I love so much about the band and their new album.

I am going to go with the latter, because we all know that other critics (Pitchfork anyone?) will be sure to fill their pages with hyper-critical things because they don't like the band or they think Death Cab for Cutie "sold out" by signing on to Atlantic Records before making this last album. My role, then, must be to even out this disparity.

"Plans" is an album that will not only play a big role in Death Cab for Cutie's future, (obvious) but it will also help predict the future of the continuing adaptation of the underground indie music scene in pop culture. Death Cab's guest appearance(s) on the television show, "The O.C." were one major catalyst that has brought them to where they are today. But, pop culture giveth, pop culture taketh away.

When you are used to selling 10,000 albums, or even 50,000 albums, a break like being written into The O.C. because there was a big fan involved in the show can make your career take off, but nobody knows how sustainable it is. Hype brings people out once, but after that, it is up to the band to keep the momentum going. So far we have proven that television shows influence people, which we already knew, and that Death Cab's last album "Transatlanticism" was up to the challenge of capturing a whole lot of attention. Only time will tell if the new music written by Ben Gibbard, Chris Walla, Nick Harmer and Jason McGerr can keep the ever shorter collective attention spans of the fans they made over the last couple of years.

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