Chris WALLA of Death Cab for Cutie thinks that the volatile state of the download-ravaged record industry calls for a new way to measure commercial success. "It's like dog years now," the guitarist figures. "Every one record you sell actually stands for seven."
Based in Seattle, where Walla and singer-guitarist Ben Gibbard formed the band as a home-recording project in 1997, Death Cab has sold nearly 1 million copies of 2005's "Plans," its debut for Atlantic after a string of albums released by Barsuk, a hometown indie. Yet Walla says that the number of people the group plays to on tour indicates an audience much larger than that. "Maybe 'Plans' would've been a 7-million-selling record in 1994!" he exclaims.
One million or 7 million -- either figure makes Death Cab, which also includes bassist Nick Harmer and drummer Jason McGerr, one of the highest-profile acts in alternative rock right now. Later this month the band will perform alongside Jack Johnson and Roger Waters at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, and on May 13, it's scheduled to release a highly anticipated new album, "Narrow Stairs."
Coachella founder Paul Tollett remembers Death Cab's participation in the festival's 2004 edition (and booking the band at the Glass House in Pomona well before that). "It's a totally different animal now," he says.
Gibbard, seated with the rest of the group at the Le Parc Suite Hotel in West Hollywood, agrees. "This band has grown bigger than any of our wildest dreams," the frontman admits.
With that success has come a renewed willingness to experiment. Though Gibbard and his bandmates insist they made no conscious attempt to challenge their fans' expectations, "Narrow Stairs" represents something of a left turn for Death Cab: Where "Plans" emphasized the band's well-known knack for pretty, introspective indie pop, the new CD explores thornier, noisier territory. "I Will Possess Your Heart," for instance, runs for more than eight minutes, the first four of which proceed without Gibbard's trademark sensitive-male vocals.
"I don't think we sat down and said, 'Let's write a single and make it really long,' " Harmer says. "In the body of songs that we recorded, it just felt like this was the best representation of the album as a whole."
