There was a point in time around Christmas of last year when I drew a line in the dirt and took a stand-against Death Cab for Cutie.
It wasn't that Ben Gibbard, Death Cab front man and songwriter, didn't entice me with his devilishly catchy balladry.
It wasn't that Death Cab's ability to make me happy, while simultaneously deeply depressed, existed in stark moral opposition to my personal beliefs. Really, it wasn't even that I disliked Death Cab (I didn't, at all...)-it was just that I felt something needed to be done.
My intentions were noble: I was boycotting the Pacific-Northwestern's brand of soft, sentimental college-rock for the band's own good. I was going to save Death Cab from a fate worse than death...popularity.
See, Fox TV (in all its 'brilliance') stumbled on a pretty good idea a little while back when it syndicated the teenage mega-drama "The O.C." The show's combination of tanned flesh, extravagant affluence and more angst than you can shake a (really, really immature) stick at struck a chord with viewers-pretty high schoolers couldn't get enough.
On the soundtrack to the show were featured several bands that, also, managed to strike a chord of their own, including Sub-Pop superheroes The Shins and, sadly, Death Cab for Cutie.
Needless to say, the surge in popularity the band experienced after its music became inextricably linked in the minds of pubescent boys and girls with hooking-up on the beach rubbed me the wrong way-these kids didn't get Death Cab, they just liked the band because all their friends did. What the hell is that?
So, I tried to do something altruistic in abandoning the immensely wonderful Death Cab sound. For a while, it wasn't even that bad.
Then I came to my senses: Hating Death Cab is not only futile, but silly, too.
That is to say, there is nothing hateable about Death Cab for Cutie. Gibbard fleshes out his sentiments in earthy-yet-ethereal tones with the help of live instrumentation that would be impossible to duplicate in his one-dimensional synth-happy (but still pretty awesome) side-project, the popular The Postal Service.
Sure, Death Cab songs are almost entirely about girls, and that's a stigma that's hard to overcome, but that no Death Cab song is annoying or even repetitious speaks volumes for the band's ability to innovate even in well-trodden musical territory.
The band's most recent offering, the coolly-titled Transatlanticism, finds the band exploring the intricacies of heartache by placing common relationship experiences on the larger, metaphoric backdrop of distance "so wide that it's like an ocean between people."
Heady stuff for an "emo" band, to say the least.
And it's this degree of maturity in the face of youthful emotional attachment that separates Death Cab from the whiney, maligned "emo" genre at large-as opposed to wallowing in self-pity, Death Cab looks for a way to float over seas of melancholy in ways that are at once haunting and easily relatable.
But really, do I need to say all this? You know who Death Cab is, you probably could pick its trademark plaintive guitar warbles out of a musical line-up and, whether you feel like admitting it or not, you really, really (really-really-really) like Death Cab for Cutie. So get off your high horse and check the band out tonight at Redfest (8 p.m.)-it's not like it's free or anything...oh wait, yeah it is.
Just one thing: Don't ever admit to watching "The O.C." in public. Liking Death Cab's less-than-alpha-male sound is one thing, but actually supporting such mindless beach drivel in entirely another.
egreen@chronicle.utah.edu
