Death Cab For Cutie - The Open Door EP

It's not that special, but the sessions which birthed these five, quick songs sure were.

Death Cab For Cutie's Open Door EP is hardly a companion piece to the group's masterwork--Narrow Stairs--released a year ago. These leftovers from that fine album are just a hit and run hiccup.

If you're a Death Cab fanatic, go ahead--dive in. You won't not like it. But your time could be more economically spent chewing on Narrow Stairs than popping this sugar pill down your throat.

But I'm not complaining. "Little Bribes" is the most rollicking Death Cab song ever. Ever! And the demo of "Talking Bird" is even more gorgeously pensive than the cut that ended up on Narrow Stairs. And the tracks in between are top quality too. These are good Death Cab songs.

But after an album as strong as Stairs was, these songs are just a tickle. Hardly enough to tide anyone over until indie pop's prime princes put out their next long player--which I'm feverishly awaiting.

In the mean time, I must say I prefer Plans' companion release--Directions--more. It was a DVD of of art-house music videos for each song off Plans...and each by a different indie director.

For a taste...Here's "Little Brides" live from Philly's World Cafe Live a month ago.

You know how I know when it's ridiculously, disgustingly, insidiuosly, stunningly, god-forsakenly cold?

One rather 'duh' system of measurement would be to pull out your trusty ol' thermometer. If you see no red (I worked REALLY hard to avoid any Mercury pun there) in the thermometer and you're standing outside, and you can't feel your arms... then you have frost bite, it's cold, and you should stop doing whatever it is you're doing outside in the cold. However there is a bright side. At this point, you could let a bear maul your arm off, and you wouldn't feel a thing. You can't buy toughness of that magnitude, pal. Of course, you can't buy another natural left arm either, so don't go having TOO much fun with your new frostbitten limb.

Another option is to check the 5-day forecast at (ready for it? here comes the daily cheap plug!) pottsmerc.com, which can prove quite insightful. However, because Bob Dylan said "you don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows" and the simple fact that boring people check the weather (see also: people who use weather for small talk/elevator talk with colleagues and peers), I don't take this route.

Or (as brilliantly showcased in Dumb & Dumber and A Christmas Story) you could employ a brainless friend of yours and kindly ask him or her to stick their tongue to the nearest flag pole. If it sticks like rubber and the tongue needs to be hacked off, then yes, it is ridiculously, disgustingly, insidiuosly, stunningly, god-forsakenly cold out, and you should get in doors, make cocoa, and call your friend to leave him a voicemail where you can now say things like, "How come you're not answering? Pole got your tongue? I never thought you'd give me the cold shoulder like this."

But if you're like me, you're all out of friends with tongues left to stick to poles. So I've been forced to find other creative ways to find out how cold it is outside.

Today, dear readers, is ridiculously, disgustingly, insidiuosly, stunningly, god-forsakenly cold.

And do you know how I know? Because, when I went to get in my car this morning--the seats and floor were STILL COVERED IN SNOW FROM YESTERDAY'S SNOW STORM. And it's not like I didn't use the heater when I drove home last night. This, is landmark cold. This is colder than the black hearts of those folks out there who will rick-roll trick you into believing a Batman 3 trailer has surfaced. That is cold.

So now that we've established that it's cold, what now? We don't donate our frostbitten limbs to would-be mauling bears, no sir. We dig out those lonely, desolate records of warmth that only resonate when you feel lifeless, numb, and bitterly frozen in time. Days like today, these soft, soulful records set my soul afire:

Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago and Blook Bank EP

The entire catalogue of Margot & The Nuclear So & Sos (I prefer the set of acoustic demos I uncovered on the internet somewhere)

Eddie Veddar - Into The Wild Soundtrack (If you don't want to hear "Hard Sun" after a snow day, you are soulless. SOULLESS.)

Meredith Bragg & The Terminals - Silver Sonya

Brand New - The Devil & God Are Raging Inside Me

Death Cab For Cutie - Narrow Stairs (particularly the last song)

Elliott Smith - New Moon ("Angel In The Snow" and "Thirteen" get me every time)

Coldplay - Parachutes (with a name like Coldplay, they deserve to be on the cold fighters list, right?)

Nick Drake - Pink Moon (better for those quiet summer nights under the stars, but fits remarkably well in this category too)

What about you? Any records that you only listen to this time of year that just melt all those icicles growing off ya? And did you know that it was cold today?

Don't know what to get your entertainment junky (see also: nerd) for Christmas? Well, take a load off pal, you've come to the right place. I present to you the 2008 Scene & Heard Wish List. Although, keep checking back here this month for our year end lists of music, movies, and etc, which will all make great stocking stuffers too.

5. Death Cab For Cutie Holiday Package
If your little music fan (or big music fan, we don't discriminate) just got into Death Cab after this year's brilliant "Narrow Stairs," they're missing out on a whole lotta good warm-hearted indie rock. This package includes all 7 releases the band put out on Barsuk, before stepping up to a major label. Does not include "Plans" or "Narrow Stairs," but is a golden deal for Death Cab beginners.

4. The Limited Edition Beatles iPod Box Set
Want to go overboard? Sure you do. I see that look in your eyes. Show the economy that you don't need to cut back! Nothing says overboard like this baby, which you can only get from Bloomingdales for the special low price of $795 (or on eBay for a lot lot more). It's all here, the treasure trove. You get all the apples--Apple's classic iPod with a Beatles logo and 120gb of storage, and all the CD's from the Apple label's discography (including "Love"). And you get a guitar pick too, for some reason. All tidied up in a sleek wooden box. Plus, there is only 2500 copies in existence. Owning one makes you super special! In all seriousness, it's the coolest box set and iPod you'll find, but only for the biggest Beatlemaniacs. Now's also a good time to mention that The Beatles remain one of the last remaining bands not available on iTunes, though it's apparently going to happen some day. But not bad, right?

3. Of course, you could just shell out for a regular ol' iPod or iPhone, which I promise won't upset any person willing to live amongst the technology of the 21st century. Always a safe bet.

2. The Dark Knight on Blu-Ray
The biggest, boldest, movie of the year that crossed over from comic books into the mainstream this year in a huge way. And yes, it MUST be on Blu-Ray, not DVD, because it's the best looking movie ever, and the action scenes are all shot in hi-def. Since it hits stores on Dec 9, there are going to be a lot of Bat fans looking for this under the tree. Do. Not. Disappoint. Them. (Yes, that is a threat.) There's also a special edition available that comes with a statuette Batpod, but...that could be a bit overboard.

1. DIY mix
That's right, the way to really impress them is to do it yourself. And you know what? You spend a nickel on a CD-R (or cassette if you really want to impress them). That's it! Just put some excellent music together and they'll love you forever. Because they'll know you care, and that you put the time in. Of course, mixmaking is quite an artform, so be careful of what you're getting yourself into and be wise and selective in your song choices. Don't think you got what it takes? That's ok, you can bake them some warm cookies. That works too.

And just for fun...
Let's go old school and bring back the full-on pajamas look. www.thecatspjs.com. May I recommend the crossword puzzle pjs?

Some records become big personal things, like rickety cars that stop and pick up your hitch-hiking head to take it where you want to go, or atleast as close as it is willing to take you. Whether it's anywhere but here, or somewhere particular. For me, Death Cab For Cutie's "Narrow Stairs" (released last Tuesday) became one such experience.

I haven't read "Big Sur."

As an obvious star gazer of Jack Kerouac's, I know full well I should. But shying away from Jack's swan song is not so much of ignorance as it is fear.

I know the novel's chapters spell the end of Kerouac's road and I know it ain't pretty. It's mired in longing, as always, but is sunken deep in a much danker and lonelier world than his preceding works. It's night time falling, and at 24, I'm not ready to sink into that sadness. I still want to believe in the road. The wide open world without locks, keys, shackles. Everything dancing, bopping, blasting and blaring, shining, wild, on fire and free. Branches blowing violently in the wind, leaves shaken miles and miles away into the woods, long long ways from home. That's where I'm at. (Even though, I live in the house where I grew up, my mind nor heart is never, ever here.)

I'm still too steeped in naivety to face such a written work.
I still believe in trees running around without roots in the ground.
I still believe in the American dream.

So I'll read "Big Sur" when I'm ready to face reality, square in his droopy, bloodshot eyes.

Death Cab For Cutie brainchild/frontman/songwriter, Ben Gibbard, however, has read "Big Sur."

Better yet, he wrote a part of "Narrow Stairs" in the same cabin where Jack himself wrote "Big Sur." Gibby even wrote an essay titled "The Meaning Of Life" about the whole experience, which you should read if you plan on giving the album any real spin, which I do recommend you should.

Ben went to the cabin, lost, and in search of Jack's fervent wisdom. He wanted to know the next step.

When I peeled off the wrapping of the new Death Cab record and opened up the CD tray in my bedroom, I wasn't one bit different; I came to Ben, looking for wisdom, the next curve. Where does the next bend in the road take me? Tell me, Ben. I know you know. "I want to know my fate."

The odd thing is, no Death Cab record has ever spilled fourth one nugget of truth or visionary wisdom. Their best songs have reveled in both sad struggles and life's most cheery-eyed moments; all the bumps in the road. But they never plotted me a map, never spouted me off a set of directions. (Though, their awesome supplemental music vid DVD to "Plans" was CALLED "Directions.")

And yet, I slipped on my headphones looking for a road sign that read "Revelations-next 11 tracks." I did this because their songs carve up this unique little language for me; A whole new cursive world, rife with a chaotic sadness that somehow unearths a glimmer of hope in a deep coal mine of despair.

Think about it. Many of us slipped right into Ben's shoes when he found his ex girlfriend's picture in his glove box while being pulled over by a cop ("Title & Registration"). His songs are our songs, and they're all about where we pulled over on the side of the road and had to just re-think about how we got there. They put you in the driver seat, but they were never ever about where we were actually going. We asked if we should be somewhere else? Should you have stayed with someone else? Should you have made a different choice? They're question songs, not answer songs. But Death Cab keep asking the right questions, so I keep expecting answers, though I should know by now I'm not gonna get them.

But this has never been as clear as on "Narrow Stairs." Ben begins the record where Jack ends, at "Bixby Canyon Bridge." The song begins soft, sweet, serene as Ben descends "into a dusty gravel ridge." He looks around, raises some wet, muddy gravel from the shallow creek bottom and lets it fall through his fingers back into the water. He waits for Jack's spirit to rise up, smirk at him and say "Ben, I'm so glad you've come. I've been waiting for you. What you have been searching for your entire life, is here, trickling in the water. Ask me anything, I have your answers."

Bixby Canyon Bridge

But nothing happens. The world turns.

The wind blows through the canyon. The sun sets, slowly. The soft current of water trickles around Ben's bare feet. Ben talks to himself, and Jack and his answers never rise up through the earth's cracks.

It's like being young.

Then Ben's voice disappears into a rush of tightly wound drum skin pounding and angular guitar feedback swirls that fill the speakers with disenchanting spirals of out-of-control noise. And you try to make sense out of it, to separate the notes, to find Ben buried in the mess. You try to dissect the nonsense and find yourself as lost as Ben surely felt, standing there like a cold, wet moron in the water.

It's like realizing you're getting older.

And then it fades back to soft and airy, the sound of the world spinning slowly. And Ben's voice rises back to the surface, only to say that he turns around and leaves, no closer to the truth, no closer to knowing what this "American Dream" really is. And Jack probably never found it either. So, perhaps, in a way, Ben did find Jack. It's just not the Jack he had dreamed for so long of meeting.

"I cursed myself for being surprised that this didn’t play like it did in my mind," he sings.

It's like waking up from the American dream. With a really bad hangover.

The rest of the album is caked in this thick dreary mud from Bixby Canyon's Bridge. It's tighter, and much more aimless than anything they've written before. Whereas their 2 previous records were wide open and emotionally expansive (not unlike the first half of "On The Road"), "Narrow Stairs" walks quietly down a back alley with it's hands in it's pockets, totally unsure of itself or where to go. But that's not to say it's dead weight floating along with a lack on ambition.

The nearly 9-minute first single "I Will Possess Your Heart" is hardly unambitious. In fact, the song leaps right back into a world of longing and hopeful dreams, which we just learned in the first song leads to no more than dead ends and more questions. Backed by a propulsive bass line and cathartic piano twinkles, the frigid song shakes off it's icy arms easily with Ben obsessing over a girl he knows he could get to unconditionally love him if she would just give him her time of day. The music critic circuit has aptly billed the song the ultimate stalker song this side of "Every Breath You Take," but what romantic stud hasn't felt that convinced about a girl, at least once?

The album continues to dive into a more lunar world than the road trip soundscapes which spanned their past few records. But it's pretty lively for something that makes life seem so sad and heavy with gravity. Ben watches his inner optimist die in "No Sunlight" and watches from a hillside as grapevines burn in a roaring out of control fire while firefighters pray for heavy downpours of rain (in all likelihood, this is of the California wild fires from last year), but the songs are all entwined in their own patches of fruitful chords.

He even watches a friend give up on hopes, dreams, and love in the excellent "Your New Twin-Sized Bed." "What's the point in holding onto something that never gets used," he sings.

And the album comes seemingly close to some sort of end on a cold and lonely note, with "The Ice Is Getting Thinner." It doesn't mark the end of the relationship Ben sings of, but he knows an end is looming, just a few degrees away from finishing off the sheet of ice he sits on. In the past, he would have written this song from the perspective of the ice being half-frozen, but after his trip to "Bixby Canyon Bridge," it's half-melted.

It'd be a stretch to call this the best record of the year. (The album lost serious points for packaging it with the most difficult lyric book to pull out of the plastic case, EVER!) But the most personal account? The one that has the most to say to a guy who's looking for a little direction and noise in his currently quiet life? That, it most certainly is.

It makes me want to connect with the ethereal muse that Jack and Ben and so many others found out there in the wide open, even though it specifically shows that catching such spirits and such experiences does nothing to help you get any inches closer to what you're really after--that American Dream, God, love, success, whatever; the fabled end of the road.

I think, as a country, we're starting to carve up the American dream again. It went in hiding for a few decades. But it's coming back. I see it all over the place. I feel it. I see it. And who can blame us? We need something to believe in again. This record puts it that into song, and is perhaps, the shape of dreams to come.

What better to dream, than waking from the wickedness of an unforgiving nightmare, to find the road has no end? That's an answer worth embarking out into the world and searching under every single stone for, and one I'm prepared to do.

What's manning my brainwaves today?

The new Indiana Jones trailer hits the netwaves.
Punk Goes Crunk.
Death Cab announce tracklisting for upcoming "Narrow Stairs." Sounds like it might be a stairway to heaven.