Death Cab for Cutie

Plans is Seattle quartet Death Cab for Cutie's fifth album, but in many ways it's an album of firsts. It's their first for Atlantic Records, after a long and productive relationship with Seattle-based indie Barsuk. It's their first recorded on 48 tracks, their first recorded on the East Coast, and their first with a song originated by a member other than Ben Gibbard ("Brothers on a Hotel Bed," by Chris Walla). It's their first recorded with the same drummer (Jason McGerr) as the previous one. It's their first since tireless touring helped bring them hundreds of thousands of new fans across the U.S. and around the world.

First and foremost, however, what makes Plans so fresh and so stunning is that it is an album that lives up to its potential and its promise. In a hyperspeed culture where bands are signed from their practice spaces, where overhyped genres live and die between issues of a magazine, Death Cab for Cutie is an anachronism, a throwback: a dedicated group of friends and musicians with talent to spare and a fanbase that grows larger with every day, every disc, and every download. And with Plans, they've delivered a masterpiece.

Death Cab for Cutie's Plans is available now.

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Feist

KFOG Private Concert 11/10/05 (video)

Eye to eye and ear to ear, Let It Die is very much a voice album in close up. Carefully pieced together around timelessly simple melodies, the album forms the missing link between ye old folk (storytelling), the Brill building era (the quest for the hook), doo-wop (melody and minor key moods), and minimal modern pop arrangements.

"As it's bedrock, there remains that voice: an instrument whose arcs, swoops, cracks and surges hint at the heartache, but whose essential reserve is, ironically, its most potent weapon." London Sunday Times Jan '05

 Feist's Let It Die is available now.

 

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