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 album since OC TV character Seth Cohen professed his undying love for their music, and 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.

Plans comes exactly two years after the release of DCFC's most artistically complete and commercially successful work up to that time, the acclaimed Transatlanticism. With so much accomplished and so much yet to do, the members of Death Cab decided to plunge right back into the studio following their extensive 2004 world tour. The result is the record of their still young careers. Says Harmer, "this album is very much a brother or a sister to Transatlanticism. Despite the title, we never sat down to plan it, it just came out - fully formed - from the momentum of our last two years." But it's drummer McGerr who perhaps sums it up best: "If Transatlanticism was an inhale, Plans is the exhale."

"And it came to me then, that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time."

Plans was recorded over 28 wintry days in early 2005 at Longview Studios, housed in a converted barn in Massachusetts. Chris Walla, as always, served as producer - and claims not to have seen daylight once during the recording. Perhaps that's why he suddenly blurted out the album title to Harmer during a lull in conversation over burritos.

If Transatlanticism - with its ageless refrain of "I need you so much closer" - ached over the distance, both literal and emotional, that sometimes springs up between two people, Plans concerns itself with the yawning gap that waits in front of us all: aging and eventual death. "All of us in the band are starting to turn a corner and realize our youth is basically over," says the 29-year-old Gibbard. "That's not a bad thing; it's just that the feeling of invincibility begins to fall by the wayside. I've got a house now, a serious relationship. I'm becoming an adult. And for me, that means being aware of the slow process of losing people in your life."

The album begins with the wide-eyed hope of "Marching Bands of Manhattan," a gorgeous, spiraling song about living in the moment - or at least trying to. "I'm the sort of person that's always dwelling on the destination rather than the journey," Ben says. "Even when I'm in a great situation there's always this moving thought that it all is going to have to end. "Marching Bands' and the next song, 'Soul Meets Body,' are about me trying not to fall back into old habits." Indeed, themes that begin in one song are continued throughout the album, building, piece by piece, into a satisfying emotional whole.

On "Soul Meets Body" - the album's chiming, addictive first single - Gibbard's layered "ba-ba-ba"s and the band's subtly shifting instrumentation (based on a demo that Gibbard built around sampled sounds) combine to transform a lyric about death ("and if the darkness takes you I hope it takes me too") into one of the most romantic love songs he's ever penned. That same morbid-yet-ecstatic Smiths-ian rapture pops up again in the haunting and bare "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," an acoustic folk number with a timeless lyric already called "better than most songs anyone has written" by the Seattle Times. It's a credit to Walla's prodigious gifts as a producer and arranger that both songs - one constructed, one untouched - feel equally rich in texture and fully alive. "Our communication as a band has improved so much over the last two records," says Walla. "I just found myself saying 'yes' a heck of a lot more than I said 'no.'"

The sweaty and slinky "Summer Skin," anchored by Harmer"s lascivious bass and McGerr's relentless snare, relates a tale of a first love bookended by the seasons. "Different Names for the Same Thing" is both Gibbard's favorite song on the album and its most musically adventurous. "It's a simple thought, really," he says. "It's a song about traveling by yourself in a foreign country and the frustration of being isolated by language, even when you're surrounded by people." But when the story is over, the simplicity stops as well: the song suddenly bursts and blooms into a cacophony of multi-tracked vocals and frantic rhythms.

The kaleidoscopic "Your Heart Is an Empty Room" and the jaunty "Crooked Teeth" each tackle themes of regret and renewal - the former with its vision of a cleansing fire and the latter with its sober take on a failed relationship - while "Someday You Will Be Loved" churns up the same waters as Transatlanticism's bitter "Tiny Vessels," but this time with a more optimistic bent.

It's with "What Sarah Said" that Plans arguably reaches its emotional zenith - and ironically the song very nearly didn't make the cut. "It stewed for a year and a half," Gibbard says. The song sets Gibbard's heartbreaking story of being trapped in an emergency room "that reeks of piss and 409," waiting for news of a critically ill or injured loved one.

It turns out that what Sarah actually said - "love is watching someone die" - is the thesis of the entire album. "The song was inspired by a friend," says Gibbard. "She was walking with her husband one day and just burst into hysterical tears because she realized that one day one of the two of them would have to watch the other die." Only a songwriter as dexterous as Gibbard could make a tear-jerking refrain about the end of love ("so who's going to watch you die?") sound as effortless and bright as falling in love in the first place.

Plans concludes with "Brothers on a Hotel Bed," which finds Gibbard transforming Walla's warm and wistful melody into another reflection on age and aging and, finally, "Stable Song," a clear-eyed ode to the quiet life. "Our longevity and history come through a lot on this record," says Harmer. "There's now an unspoken trust and communication between all four of us, a great flow. All we had to do was not interrupt it."

Plans is a beautiful and mature album from a group that itself is still evolving. Death Cab for Cutie is that rare band that isn't afraid to tackle the big thought, to wrestle with the complex, never black and white realities of human interaction. From its soaring beginning to its somber end, Plans is the sound of growing up, of gaining friends and losing them, of realizing, perhaps for the first time, the weight and consequences of every decision we make, of every heart we touch. It is an album about growing old that can grow old with us.

"I feel like the album is a complete thought," says Harmer with pride in his voice. "Hopefully it's 45 minutes that can block out the din of life, make you put your phone down, and provide some solace." You heard the man: set the phone to "silent," and the stereo to "play." And we promise you won't need to take our word(s) for it anymore.