  The Rules Were
Broken Before We Were Born:
Death Cab For
Cutie's Ben Gibbard Reinvents Rock With Toys and
Broken Instruments
All-Time
ĦQuarterback!
CD Review by Stephanie Pure
I first learned
of Death Cab For
Cutie guitarist Ben Gibbard's songwriting skills
shortly after he sold me a $2 Death Cab For
Cutie tape out of his backpack in 1997.
Called You Can Play These Songs With Chords,
the eight song tape was recorded when the
embryonic Death Cab consisted of Gibbard playing every
instrument. He got a little help with the songs
on that tape from Chris Walla, who is now a Death Cab guitarist, and some
vocal assistance from singer Abigail Hall.
Featuring eight
songs that could rock and still say something, You
Can Play These Songs With Chords, became the
only thing in my stereo for the following two
months and made me one of Death Cab's most ardent fans. When
their glorious full-length, Something
About Airplanes, was released in 1998, I
picked up a copy within days of it's pressing.
Fun, poignant,
and rockin' all at the same time, Something
About Airplanes is pop music at
it's finest. With tight instrumental
performances, excellent vocals, and thoughtful
lyrics, Death Cab takes pop past
cutesiness and into something more substantial.
It's a must for anyone who also enjoys Heavenly
(now Marine Research), the Crabs, or Peter Parker. Marquee tracks include
"President of What?" and well, all of
the other ones. Really. You can't lose. I happen
to like "Amputations" and
"Pictures in an Exhibition" and judging
by the response these songs receive during Death Cab live
shows, so does everyone else.
So, after being
a Death Cab for
Cutie fan for so long, I was more than
a little curious when I heard Gibbard had come out with a solo
project, especially one with as unusual a title
as this one, All-Time ĦQuarterback!. However,
being the procrastinator that I am, I let friends
tell me what a great little EP All-Time
ĦQuarterback! was over and over before I
heard something that made me take more notice:
"Hey, like the entire recording is done on
broken or toy instruments or somethin' like that,
yeah".
Procrastinator
no more (and dwindling finances be damned); I
sent my check to Elsinor (www.elsinorpop.com) and
waited for my reward. This I had to hear.
I ordered the
All-Time ĦQuarterback! 5-song CD along with it's
cassette companion, The Envelope Sessions.
My first bit of advice for anyone interested in
ATQ is to spend the extra three bucks and get The
Envelope Sessions. Herein lies, in my mind, ATQ's
strongest track, "Underwater".
Something about this tune stopped me in my tracks
and made me rewind it and play it over and over
again. Soft and careful, the song plinks along at
a lilting pace, slowly drawing you in with beauty
and wondrous imagery. Definitely worth it.
Other gems on The
Envelope Sessions include,
"Cleveland", a very sad tune, but
great, and "Factory Direct", a clever
take on the mass marketing of
music. The Envelope Sessions also
contains a few cute, plucky numbers, which seem
to fit the toy guitar quite well, but are really
more novelty items than substantial songs.
Speaking of which, the toy guitar might limit
some musicians, but Gibbard pulls off toy rock
excellence with ease.
Moving on to the
big 5-song CD, (it's only bigger in the sense
that it's physically larger than the tape, which
contains 10 tracks), this is were ATQ shines
bright. The disc starts out with that distantly
familiar Casio sound and unfolds into something
truly special. One soon forgets that they are
listening to instruments with one string or are
otherwise on their last leg. Gibbard is able to pull
sometimes catchy and sometimes heartbreaking
music from these instruments so deftly that it
doesn't seem likely the songs could be improved,
even with fully-functional equipment.
The disc's songs
range from the jaunty "Untitled" to the
teary "Send Packing". I happen to
prefer those in between, especially "Plans
Get Complex", which describes the
complications of getting older and "Rules
Broken" which bears my favorite lines of the
EP, ".if we could break the rules/ That were
already broken/ Before we were born/ Then we
could hold them to/ Their guns cause we'd be/ a
Punk rock band, too." Rock on.
Another gem on
the disc is ATQ's version of the Magnetic Field's
tune, "Why I Cry". Not having heard the
original, (shame on me), I cannot tell if Gibbard butchers it or what, but
it's sounds superb to me. Gibbard manages to make the
synthesizers not sound like an eighties disaster
by blending it all in with gorgeous vocals.
Now, mind you,
the tracks on ATQ do not soar or rock like many
of those on a Death Cab for
Cutie recording, but they're really not
meant to. The simplicity of the music is unique
and refreshing and shows that Gibbard's music succeeds, not as
a result of gimmicks or tricks, but in spite of
them. This project could have easily descended
into kitsch or novelty, but instead he has
produced something lasting and good.
All-Time
ĦQuarterback! won't be touring again anytime
soon (for those who were able to catch the
November 23rd show at the Crocodile, I applaud
you), but you should look forward to full-length
releases from both ATQ and Death Cab sometime in the year
2000. In the meantime, I suggest you pick up a
bit of ATQ ahead of time and see what Gibbard's up to these days.
While it won't make you play air guitar
or shout, it will make you marvel. In
short, ATQ is a definite must for pop-music fans.
Click here for An
All Time Quarterback Fan Site
Death Cab For
Cutie Pix!
Review of the
Death Cab CD, Something
About Airplanes
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