Death Cab for Cutie have released their eleventh studio album, I Built You A Tower, out now via ANTI Records, marking the band’s return to independent footing after two decades on Atlantic.
The indie rock veterans, eight time Grammy nominees Benjamin Gibbard, Nicholas Harmer, Jason McGerr, Dave Depper and Zac Rae, previewed the record with ‘Stone Over Water’, which Gibbard describes as a song about convincing everyone around you, and above all yourself, that you are fine when you are anything but. To mark release week the band performed lead single ‘Riptides’ on Jimmy Kimmel Live, the track having become their ninth number one on Billboard’s Adult Alternative Airplay chart.
Produced and engineered by John Congleton and pulled together from just three weeks of sessions, I Built You A Tower was recorded at Animal Rites in Los Angeles and at the members’ homes in Seattle, Bellingham, Los Angeles and Portland. Its origins trace back to the band’s sold out anniversary tours for Transatlanticism and Plans, runs that coincided with Gibbard weathering the heaviest pressure of his career while his personal life came apart in the background. The “tower” began as somewhere to put that loss and grief, a shell that, as he puts it, the trauma occasionally breaks out of.
In support, Death Cab for Cutie tour the UK and Europe across September and October with Pool Kids, with UK shows in Manchester (19 September), Edinburgh (20th), Gateshead (21st), Bristol (23rd) and two London nights at the Troxy (25th and 26th).
I Built You A Tower is out now via ANTI Records.
