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Death Cab For Cutie Nominated for “Best Alternative Music Album” Grammy, Return To Touring

2011 will likely go down in Ben Gibbard’s memory as an eventful year. His band, Death Cab for Cutie, narrowly escaped serious injury at a show in Ottawa last summer when the stage collapsed just prior to them playing. Then, by year’s end, his short marriage to actress and singer Zooey Deschanel was in ruins. The couple filed for divorce in early January.

With a new year in progress the veteran Seattle pop rock band returns to the road to promote their eighth studio album, “Codes and Keys,” which was released in the spring of 2011 and is nominated for a 2012 Grammy Award for “Best Alternative Music Album.” This new touring bout includes a show in March in Singapore and continues with a U.S. trek that begins in April in Denver, Colorado. More dates through Europe and the rest of the world are expected for the summer.

KOvideo caught up with Gibbard at his home during a break. It’s certainly been a life changing few years for the 35-year-old Washington State native. For one thing, and it’s a very big thing, “Codes and Keys” was the first record he made sober. Following DCFC’s 2008 chart topper “Narrow Stairs,” Gibbard stopped drinking. While Gibbard’s personal life is out-of-bounds, he talks candidly about that and his passion for making (and listening to) music.

KOvideo What’s your favorite thing to do when relaxing at home?

Ben Gibbard I really look forward to being in the living room and putting on to a record. I associate being at home with listening to records and being in one place. Listening to records is very symbolic of music being sedentary. I spend so much of my life with music and being in constant motion that it’s nice to be able to interact with music in a sedentary way where it stays in one place. The only movement you have to worry about is turning over the record in twenty minutes.

Live music is a very different beast to listening to a record, isn’t it.

That’s also great, but so much of my life is doing things like that in the live situation that I very much relish music being in one place for a while.

Plus, all you have to do is put the record on and listen. You do not have to perform, even if you’re listening to Death Cab. It’s more passive.

Yeah, but you have to be attentive. You have to also be aware that you are going to have to get up from your chair and flip the thing over. It requires due diligence. [Laughs]

Since “Narrow Stairs” was released you’ve had a number one album with that record and had this record debut Top Ten on the Billboard chart in the U.S. – number three to be precise – and this time it was without having to do any promotion. That must feel pretty good.

It does feel good. It’s nice, most importantly, now almost fourteen years into doing this, is the fact that the band has survived for so much longer than I ever thought it would. It feels really great that people still listen. That the music that I’m writing and we’re putting together is still finding a place in people’s lives. At the end of the day, that’s the most important thing. It was a hoot to have a number one record for a week and it was great that so many people went out and bought “Codes and Keys” in the first week. My biggest concern as a musician and as a songwriter is to keep my head down and focus on what is important as an artist. And that is to keep creating things and never rest on your laurels.

Do you mind if we talk bout your sobriety – is this the first album you made since you quit the hooch?

It was, yeah.

How was that? Was it a different experience to before?

It certainly is a lot easier to write when you aren’t hung-over. You get a lot more done in a day when you don’t wake up angry. I would never go so far as to say that the tone of this record related to that change in my lifestyle. But I certainly think that I’ve got a lot more work done in the years since I quit drinking than I did in an average year when I was. If only because you are not pissing away hours of your evening and the next day subsequently feeling bad about it, you know. I’ve always been an early riser and it’s a lot easier to rise when you aren’t affected by what you’ve done the night before. It’s a lot easier to get to the studio; it’s a lot easier to get to work.

Are you surprised that you are still inspired all these years later?

The four of us are like sponges for music. We’re all constantly inspired every time we start to make a record because someone’s got a new piece of gear, or they’ve found a new record with a great keyboard sound: It’s like, ‘Oh, I just bought his new thing that makes this weird sound that would work great on that song’. As long as those moment are still happening, that’s just who we are. I don’t know if I’m in a position to say this or not, but I think every record we’ve made has been different than the record previous. Apart from two records n the middle of our career perhaps.

Any secret ambitions left, anything else you’d like to achieve?

I suppose my goals now as a musician don’t have a number attached to them, they don’t have an award attached to them. It’s not like it’s my goal to win a Grammy, not that I don’t welcome the opportunity. But selling triple platinum with this record isn’t a concern of mine and those things never ever have been. The important thing is to try and keep making music that excites me, primarily, and excites my band members, and fires us up to get in the studio and make more records. As long as I continue that I think I’ll continue living the life I want as a musician.

We surpassed all the modest goals we had as a band in like 2003. [Laughs.] Everything about the last eight years has been gravy. If the band ended tomorrow I wouldn’t feel like I’ve missed out on some opportunity, or we didn’t accomplish what we needed to accomplish. It doesn’t make everything we do from that point on futile as much as you realize that the only reason we’re doing this is because it’s fun and we feel inspired to do it. I think that in a way that’s a much more freeing position to be in than if you have some goal that you’re trying to accomplish. If you’re goal is to win Grammies then that’s a pretty piss poor reason to make music. That’s not why you do it. As long as that remains our focus, the joy of doing it, then I want to keep doing it.

"Death Cab For Cutie Nominated for “Best Alternative Music Album” Grammy, Return To Touring" was originally published to Death Cab For Cutie on KOvideo