Y Narrow Stairs vuelve a utilizar la misma fórmula. Las once nuevas canciones no ofrecen grandes variaciones respecto a los seis discos predecesores. El único atisbo de experimentación lo aporte el single de presentación, I Will Possess Your Heart, con una introducción de cuatro pretenciosos minutos y otros cuatro en que se suma Gibbard a una melodía que construye una batería que parece de Radiohead. En conjunto forman un disco compacto, que no desmerece en absoluto la gran trayectoria de la banda, pero que puede resultar decepcionante para el que esperara que el grupo fuera a dar un paso adelante en su sonido. Quizá su momento cumbre fue entre The Photo Albulm (2001) y Transatlanticism (2003) y el momento de probar nuevas cosas pasar entonces, pero son capaces de seguir produciendo grandes canciones.

Death Cab For Cutie no hacen sino confirmarse como uno de los referentes absolutos del indie americano. Gibbard y Walla son idolatrados por muchos adolescentes y post-adolescentes gracias a sus apariciones continuas en bandas sonoras de éxitos pretendidamente alternativos, unos más dudosos que otros, como O.C., Garden State o Six Feet Under. La portada de Transatlanticism es un icono para la generación del fotolog en su vertiente más melancólica. Pero su música tiene un espacio entre los grandes del género por derecho propio. The Postal Service y su Such Great Heights impulsó a Gibbard y puso a Death Cab en órbita. Por suerte muchos siguen valorándolos como lo que son y representaban cuando eran minoritarios: un grupo de gran calidad, que ha encontrado su fórmula y que es la perfecta compañía en los días de lluvia.

A) Not having a job and being pressure to find one so that I don't get anymore behind on child support.

B) Moving in with my mother and all of her bullshit.

C) My boyfriend living in Indianapolis and the separation anxiety that goes with it.

It's been a lot for me to juggle, but luckily, I have Mr. Gibbard on my side and every now and then he seems to make it a little better. I haven't really been listening to much music until lately. I'm finding a new love for the other stuff that Death Cab for Cutie has done. I fully appreciate the amateur sound of their earlier albums; it's refreshing.

I envy Ben for having such a way with words. I really don't know how he does it.

I think that's mostly all I have to say.

There really hasn't been that much drama today for the fact that my mother is over at fucktard's house for the evening. I guess he has to go into work at three a.m. tomorrow. If you ask me, the foolish bastard can just walk.

-Taylour.

Hoy, buena música. "Transatlanticism", por Death Cab For Cutie.

Ah, las etiquetas... ¿Qué sería de nosotros, LSCE, en su vertiente diletante o acomodaticia, sin ellas? Nos hacen la vida mucho más sencilla, convirtiendo la disección de un disco en un mero ejercicio de etiquetado y reposición cultural, sólo es necesario encontrar un par de grupos con los que comparar (cuantos más antiguos o desconocidos, mejor) y a correr. Y si ni por esas funcionamos, nos inventamos la etiqueta. Con dos cojones.

Hace un tiempo ya, cuando el término "indie" estaba sobreexplotado y alcanzaba unas cotas de ambigüedad capaces de rivalizar con la política trasvasista del PP, hubo que parir el termino "shoegazing". A pesar de tener su cierta coña, ya que hacía referencia a la actitud por parte de algunos artistas de sufrir encima del escenario y mostrar su angustia vital mirándose la punta de los zapatos en lugar de la cara de quien había pagado su buen dinero por ver la suya, el término estaba condenado a una corta vida. Bien podría decirse que los Death Cab For Cutie habrían podido formar parte de la tribu shoegazer. Pero no...

Death Cab For Cutie se forman, como otras tantas ocasiones (The Postal Service, All-Time Quarterback), al aburrirse Ben Gibbard de hacer lo que estaba haciendo y juntarse con cuatro amigos cuando, ba-da-bing!, el éxito llama a sus puertas. Si es que no se puede tener talento, demonios.

"Transatlanticism" es la máxima expresión de sensibilidad y habilidad por parte del bueno de Gibbard, quien junta 11 canciones donde, hasta la más tonta ("The New Year", canción imprescindible para mi y mis contactos de Orange en día de año nuevo desde 2004) da en la diana.

11 canciones como 11 soles, perfectas para disfrutar o redescubrir. 11 canciones perfectas para enamorar a tu novia con la guitarra. 11 canciones perfectas para esos días que estas un poco triste pero no te apetece dejarte llevar cuesta abajo. 11 canciones perfectas para tararear o escuchar con la letra en la mano. 11 canciones perfectas para sentir un estallido de alegría contenida. 11 canciones perfectas para explicar a un extraterrestre, a Ninette o a un señor de Murcia lo que debería ser el pop bien entendido.

11 canciones perfectas.

Punto.

———————————————————————————————-

En otro orden de cosas, ayer llegué a casa por la noche un poco cansado después de una semana sin noticias de siesta y me apetecía darme un premio. Por la mañana habíamos tenido el reconocimiento médico, al que fuimos en ayunas después de haber estado bromeando sobre pillar el pedo del siglo la noche anterior para ver si salía algo de alcohol en los análisis de sangre.

Como mi tensión es ejemplar, el colesterol jamás ha sido un problema para mi y da gusto comprobar que, cuatro meses desde la última vez que utilicé las zapatillas de correr, sigo en mis 13, o mejor dicho, en mis 65 kilos y medio, me preparé un festín sin venir a cuento. Porque estamos vivos, porque las patatas empiezan a chitar o porque es San Aniceto, eso es lo de menos.

Y mientras escribo esto escucho un concierto bajado de la mula de los Radiohead y me sigo sorprendiendo de lo buenos que me siguen pareciendo.

Aunque este año no toque verlos.

Número de familiares en el extranjero: 1. Han dado sol y buen tiempo para mañana en Boston. Vientos de 22 kilómetros hora. o eso dice el canal weather de la Wii.

My friend is angry at me, she dislikes that I am so accepting of classical art—and its theories.  She says, “it’s nice to have friends that agree with you.  To have friends— that’s what I don’t have the luxury of.”  She thinks if I were more honest, then I wouldn’t be trying so hard to draw “like” someone else.  Teach yourself she says, that’s how you’ll learn.  I don’t think she minds that it is harder, and might take longer.  To me I don’t worry about that either, but there is something, something else I do worry about.

She has a point though, since the other day we went to a drawing club— to draw Santa for three hours.  I couldn’t sit still for more than ten minutes, getting up, moving seats, drawing a little, then beginning to dream of other things— other people.  And there she was —  painting of all things! for three hours straight!  No food, and no stretching, except for a restroom break— this is very admirable. She said, loosen up, you’ll draw better and longer.  I couldn’t— couldn’t even want to try anything different than I had so far.  The thought was foreign— as much as the desire to.

She says, “it is more of a handicap than it is a help,” to draw like I do— from what I see, or do, draw.  In a way, she is also saying, “it is nice to have friends, but they aren’t worth it.  They hold you back, they make you want to agree with them— doing as they do.”

But I wonder, if there isn’t a friend of hers, which she hasn’t introduced me to, that she draws like.  That everything she puts onto paper, she wonders what this person might say, or think.  That there isn’t a person in the world which can distract her from  this person.  Perhaps they aren’t even alive anymore, perhaps it is even because they are dead, that she is now more faithful than ever before.  Perhaps that’s why she’s so irritated at me, for drawing as I do, like this person, and not the same person, she does.

I never really thought that trying to draw like someone, like Bargue, was a bad thing for me to do.   For the Bargue I know, is only on paper, in these pages, of a book I am drawing from.  Whether he’s dead or not, is somewhat irrelevant, for nothing can refute the truth of what is present for me, and anyone who wishes to look at these pages too, of what Bargue drew.  Of what he drew like, what he drew, and how he drew like.  LIKE, seems simple enough, to draw like Bargue, to know when I am or am not.  So simple, I don’t even need his approval, or advice I suppose, for what advice did he ever give aside from what he did, what he already approved: he didn’t need to give advice, since there really was nothing to contest or disagree with.  So simple, that Bargue just drew, like some write, out what they did.

If there were ever a difference betweeen Bargue and my friend’s-- possible, friend, is that Bargue is not so far away.  That the reason it takes me so long to draw out a simple copy, is because it’s as if I’m in a conversation with Bargue— which like any conversation never needs rushing.  That I am talking to him as I draw—perhaps my first time really, being able to do two things at once.  While on the other hand, my friend’s friend, being so far away, makes her hang on every word, imagined or said, so that she draws more compulsively—perhaps more like she is tracing, rather than outlining or sketching.

Really, I could be all wrong, about this all.  That there is nothing, I have said, about why someone might like to draw like someone or not.  But I guess I just see drawing a little more like a good song.  Like the song Ben Gibbard openend with, with the lyrics, by Donovan, “When you’re feeling kinda lonesome in your mind / with a heartache following you so close behind / call out to me as I ramble by / And . . . I’ll sing a song for you / That’s what I’m here to do / To sing for you.”  Ben Gibbard singing Donovan’s lyrics!  That Ben would sing those lyrics, by his friend—almost for him—while he seems happy enough to sing them himself.  Why is drawing like music to me?  It is because when you’re really drawing, you’re just drawing, when singing, you’re just singing: there are just notes— type and sketches.  And if someone wants to argue about it, just show them the notes, and see for yourself, if it is so.

Perhaps I am comfortable with Bargue.  That Bargue has calmed my fears, and instead of singing he's drawn for me, he has shown me something—that I can fall to sleep with, a little closer each night.  That he has been there with me, so that I may be there for someone else—one day.  And the next song Ben played went something like this,

 “I’ll be the grapes fermented, bottled and, served  with a table set / and my finest suit—like a perfect gentlemen / I’ll be the fire escape, that’s bolted to the ancient brick, where you will sit and contemplate your day.”

There was no break.  

Why haven’t I written about Ben Gibbard?  Because I don’t know music?  How it feels, to be moved, to notes, to the techniques that make me slowly open my journal to rewrite the lyrics.  Lyrics that I am incpable of believing, to believe they could be said—and better?  Could anything be better, than listening after breaking up with a girlfriend, not recently or not even within the past year, but one so long ago that she said—what he said.  What he has been saying for so long now.

Why haven’t I written about the love I have found.  Found, in rolling into bed, sleeping on my side, curled up inside?  That the lyrics have made me believe that one can recover, recover and cover again, to make things again!  To believe that music isn’t broken, that chipping away at the deity isn’t as superfluous, or childish.  That it isn’t just adultulescence, or just indie, emo, elecronic—POP!  That there isn’t just a romantic, with a broken—heart, lost from European sentiment.  That there is salvaged, in this sea, glamour, treading into affinity with a softened darkness.  That when I lick my lips it is not to kiss—but to sing, to speak again an ideal: though it is only mine, sorry.

Personalmente stimo molto questo gruppo, soprattutto 2 album, ' Transatlanticism' e ' Plans'. Per quanto concerne il primo, è il tipico album da ascoltare da soli, in tranquillità, nella propria stanza, per essere al meglio trasportati dalle loro leggere sonorità. Per quando riguarda il secondo, è sicuramente un album più ' vivace', ma sempre molto travolgente.

Insomma, non vi rimane altro che prendere nota e ascoltare la voce rilassante di Ben.