After releasing their iconic tragic breakup (the romantic kind, not the band-shattering kind) album with 2015’s Kintsugi and being a forerunner on the Trump-bashing bandwagon with their single “Million Dollar Loan” in 2016, indie pop and rock staples Death Cab for Cutie have finally announced their upcoming ninth studio record, dubbed Thank You for Today. The record will be dropping Friday, August 17 via Atlantic Records.
Prior to the album’s announcement, the band had still been relatively busy teasing, which included a small taster of new track titled “Your Hurricane.”
The album will be their first record to exclude the band’s longtime producer Chris Walla (who left during Kintsugi but still contributed to the album), perhaps an indication of a change in sound to come. It’s also their first album with guitarist Dave Depper and keyboardist Zac Rae as new official members in the studio, who have been part of the touring band since 2015. Thank You for Today features production from Rich Costey, who has previously worked with the likes of Fiona Apple, Franz Ferdinand, Muse, and Death Cab themselves on Kintsugi.
To sweeten the deal for fans, along with the announcement came the album’s lead single that prominently samples Yoko Ono’s “Midtrain,” titled “Gold Rush,” with a music video to boot. The clip was directed by Alex Southam, who has also done music video work for alt-J and Mumford & Sons, and seems to invoke a certain Verve-esque atmosphere, featuring frontman Ben Gibbard singing the song as he walks along an increasingly crowded sidewalk with pedestrians occasionally bumping into him.
“As I’ve gotten older,” said Gibbard about the song in an interview with NPR, “I’ve become acutely aware of how I connect my memories to my geography and [how] the landscape of the city changes. I’ll walk down Broadway and walk past a location that used to be a bar I’d frequent with friends, or somewhere where I had a beautifully intense conversation with somebody that I once loved very much. The song is not a complaint about how things were better or anything like that. It’s an observation, but more about coming to terms with the passage of time and losing the people and the moments in my life all over again as I walk down a street that is now so unfamiliar.” Check it out below.
Check out further album information below.
Thank You for Today Track List
1. I Dreamt We Spoke Again
2. Summer Years
3. Gold Rush
4. Your Hurricane
5. When We Drive
6. Autumn Love
7. Northern Lights
8. You Moved Away
9. Near/Far
10. 60 & Punk
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