Death Cab For Cutie’s eighth release Kintsugi is a strange sort of breakup album. First, it marks the departure of the band’s guitarist and producer Chris Walla, and second, it sits in the context of singer Ben Gibbard’s breakup with Zooey Deschanel. As you might expect, melancholy moments linger everywhere: opener No Room in Frame starts out like one of LCD Soundsystem’s more reflective tracks, with synths and guitars building and dropping as Gibbard sings. The breakup element gets clearer in Black Sun, with the lyrics: “How could something so fair / Be so cruel,” leaving subtlety and ambiguity behind. It’s the same big, epic indie rock that has seen them grow from interesting cult concern to a band big enough to play Madison Square Garden, and despite the understandably sombre mood it sounds as if Walla wants to leave them with a sound big enough to fill those arenas. But it doesn’t always work: sometimes it’s too overwrought and wanders into cliched territory – You’ve Haunted Me All My Life (did someone say this was a breakup album?) sounds as if it could slot perfectly into the sad, but ultimately ephemeral bit of an Adam Sandler movie, while El Dorado and Little Wanderer both lay it on painfully thick.
