Narrow Stairs

Untitled

Template:Future album Narrow Stairs is the sixth studio album by indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie. It will be released 13 May, 2008.

In October 2007, Chris Walla said that Death Cab For Cutie's new album is "in full swing; we're six songs in." He went on to say "thus far it's pretty weird and pretty spectacular; lots of blood. It's creepy and heavy... we've got a ten minute long Can jam, and had you suggested that possibility to me in 1998, I'd have eaten your puppy's brain with a spoon."[1]

Ben Gibbard, lead singer and guitarist, commented: "I just don't feel like we really have anything to prove of it other than to ourselves and to making a record we really enjoy." [2]

In a recent Billboard piece, the band is promising a "curve ball" and though it will have a number of slower songs, the band is promising some surprises: "It's really weird. It's really, really good, I think, but it's totally a curve ball, and I think it's gonna be a really polarizing record. But I'm really excited about it. It's really got some teeth. The landscape of the thing is way, way more lunar than the urban meadow sort of thing that has been happening for the last couple of records." "[It's also] louder and more dissonant and ... I think abrasive would be a good word to use. [We were influenced by] heavy, sludgy, slow metal [and] synth-punk band Brainiac."[3]

According to Billboard.com the album leads off with the nine-minute track "Bixby Canyon Bridge" and the first single will be "I Will Possess Your Heart".

Two clips of I Will Possess Your Heart were posted on Amazon.com but were subsequently removed shortly thereafter. However, a user on the music social networking site Imeem posted the clip again and now can be listened to.

I Will Possess Your Heart is slated for radio play starting March 24, 2008.

Critical reception

MTV's James Montgomery called it "unquestionably the best thing they've ever done".

Track listing

1. "Bixby Canyon Bridge"
2. "I Will Possess Your Heart"
3. "No Sunlight"
4. "Cath..."
5. "Talking Bird"
6. "You Can Do Better than Me"
7. "Grapevine Fires"
8. "Your New Twin Size Bed"
9. "Long Division"
10. "Pity and Fear"
11. "The Ice Is Getting Thinner"