I Built You A Tower isn’t an album necessarily about divorce, as much as it’s heavily informed by it. It’s why such an emphasis in the discussion around it has been place on the compartmentalisation of grief rather than grief itself. And for a band like Death Cab For Cutie, that’s absolutely the right call. For as often as they’re placed among the groundwork for what 21st Century emo would become, they aren’t quite as boxed-in by the melodrama of it all. They’ve been around since 1997; Ben Gibbard is coming up to 50; they know there’s a more elegant way to approach this.
With this album, though, ‘elegant’ might not be the most appropriate word. The basis of I Built You A Tower is definitely still in examination and rumination, but in a way that’s not as passive as that makes it sound. And for the numerous pre-release critiques about how ‘uninspired’ this sounds, that’s very good news indeed. Not being a rehash of Transatlanticism or Plans doesn’t have to be a yoke around this album’s neck, not when Death Cab For Cutie are doing a lot with seemingly little.
That rings especially true for the sound of I Built You A Tower. It might be the barest that Death Cab For Cutie have ever been in places, going even further than its predecessor Asphalt Meadows with how much conscious negative space can be found. On top of that, the likes of Pep Talk, Stone Over Water and Riptides are built from small, circular indie-rock compositions with little to augment them. It’s hardly a gripper on the surface, and Gibbard’s humble vocal delivery and a blemish-free mix aren’t helping the case otherwise.
I Built You A Tower isn’t just that, though, and it really comes into its own when it’s allowed to show that off. Stone Over Water gives the very telling line “I’m trying to hold it together”, exemplified when the mask slips and the raggedness at the album’s thesis comes through. It’s heralded early on Punching The Flowers, an attempt to remain poised that gets punctured by sharp guitar and bass hits, and Jason McGerr’s drums subsuming everything in sight. Later comes the harsh, breathless noise of How Heavenly A State, and the stormy closer I Built You A Tower (b) where its snarling riff always finds itself looming overhead. It also has the lyric “I’m learning how to live without you” that couldn’t land with less certainty, as Gibbard’s failures to compartmentalise paint the album’s end in an ambiguous, compelling shade.
Fitting for this album, it’s smaller moments like that which speak to the capabilities of Death Cab For Cutie, especially in a mould like this. Gibbard’s writing is generally strong across the board—plaintive and insular in how he tries to reconcile and couch his feelings—but you’ll get a line or intonation here and there that does a little more. The opener Full Of Stars is a plainspoken little lament on love’s end, only to deliver “All I need is for you to be kind / But it seems to be rarely worth your time” with loaded disappointment rather than malice. Then, on How Heavenly A State and Trap Door, there’s a darker air that permeates through, especially in the former and its imagery of death and pain and anger.
In all, it’s a refreshingly developed approach to this kind of theming, though second nature for Death Cab For Cutie. I Built You A Tower doesn’t need to be another transcendent masterwork for that to be apparent. You can feel the experience and advanced maturity throughout, not to mention a replay value that only sees its worth climb higher and higher. Most of all, I Built You A Tower simply feels like a worthy addition to the Death Cab For Cutie canon. As a continuation of the throughline they made their own and perfected time and time again, it really is impressive how far they can still go.
For fans of: The National, Band Of Horses, Manchester Orchestra
‘I Built You A Tower’ by Death Cab For Cutie is out now on ANTI- Records.
