{"id":627775,"date":"2026-06-08T16:18:10","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627775\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T16:18:10","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T16:18:10","slug":"death-cab-for-cutie-on-divorce-holding-it-together-and-i-built-you-a-tower-one-of-the-most-powerful-things-to-say-to-people-is-youre-not-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/627775\/","title":{"rendered":"Death Cab For Cutie on divorce, holding it together, and \u2018I Built You A Tower\u2019: \u201cOne of the most powerful things to say to people is, \u2018You\u2019re not alone\u2019\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Death Cab For Cutie<\/a>\u2019s Ben Gibbard<\/a> has spoken to NME about how divorce and making peace with his past shaped new album \u2018I Built You A Tower<\/a>\u2019, as well as his thoughts on major label life and the doom that younger generations are facing.<\/p>\n

Released last week (Friday June 5), \u2018I Built You A Tower\u2019 is the indie veterans\u2019 first release on the legendary Anti- Records<\/a>, after over 20 years signed to major label Atlantic. Their new home rekindled a dormant approach to their music and seemed to sit perfectly alongside Gibbard\u2019s desire to make sense of his past, as the frontman explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI started to ruminate on this idea that one\u2019s memory and their past is like this cityscape,\u201d he told NME about the concept behind \u2018I Built You A Tower\u2019. \u201cWe have compartmentalised memories. I was envisioning this horizon of buildings of various shapes and sizes that all held moments and times in your life \u2013 like if you see an aerial shot of Manhattan. When we move through different periods in life, we create a new edifice to hold that memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

The impetus to do so came from the pain of Gibbard\u2019s marriage coming to an end, all at a time when he had to dig deep into his past each and every night for a gruelling tour celebrating 20 years of both Death Cab\u2019s \u2018Transatlanticism\u2019 and \u2018Give Up<\/a>\u2019 by his cult side project The Postal Service<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d argue that most divorces are painful,\u201d he continued. \u201cI don\u2019t hear a lot about \u2018awesome\u2019 divorces. I suppose there are some. A 10 year period of my life came to a close and I found myself in a position where I had more professional pressure on my life then I\u2019d ever had with this Death Cab and Postal Service tour. It all depended on me. It\u2019s weird to say it out loud, but it is a statement of fact. It\u2019s a co-headline where if the singer of one band doesn\u2019t show up, there\u2019s no show.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time, I\u2019m spending half of my time preparing for this tour and the other half talking to lawyers or therapists. I found on the tour that I was dealing with some very difficult things related to my divorce that were not for public consumption. I was having to manage this part of it while an hour later going out at Madison Square Garden.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cBeing on that tour and doing those shows was a welcome distraction, but there was still an element of context-switching. It was very eerie to go from, \u2018It\u2019s 2023 and I\u2019m trying to put the pieces of my life back together from the life I thought I was going to have until I passed away\u2019 while I was time-travelling back to 2003 and living in my 25-year-old self for the whole set.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

From there, Gibbard leaned into the metaphor of giving all his feelings and memories a place or \u2018tower\u2019 \u2013 a tip he recommends just so we can \u201cget through our days\u201d.<\/p>\n

Check out the rest of our interview with Gibbard below, where he tells us about the beauty of an indie label, going back to analogue, and how he\u2019s really doing now.<\/p>\n

NME: Hello Ben Gibbard. You\u2019ve described this time as \u201ca new chapter<\/a>\u201d. Do you mark a new era for each album or does that come simply from being back on Anti- Records?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ben Gibbard: \u201cI think it\u2019s mostly [because of the] label. We\u2019re in the midst of a new chapter after being on Warner for the last 20 years. It\u2019s a real change of scenery. As I\u2019ve been talking about this record and talking about the catalogue as a whole, I feel like we are in the midst of a new chapter that started with the last record [\u2018Asphalt Meadows\u2019<\/a>]. \u2018Codes & Keys<\/a>\u2019 through to \u2018Thank You For Today<\/a>\u2019 are of a particular chapter, but I really feel that starting with \u2018Asphalt Meadows\u2019 is when Dave [Depper, guitars] and Zac [Rae, keys]\u2019s integration into the band really started to bear fruit. We started to really learn how to be a five-piece. With this record, everyone just feels really confident with their role in the band. It just feels as if we\u2019re really firing on all cylinders in a way that is reminiscent of other high watermarks in the band\u2019s career to this point.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat can sound a little self-serving as we\u2019re here to promote a new album and I don\u2019t want to be sitting here trying to blow smoke, but it does feel as if we\u2019re hitting this stride where things are both effortless and feeling really inspired.\u201d<\/p>\n

How does having a label like Anti- as a home alter your approach to making and releasing music?<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst and foremost when we met with Anti-, we went to their offices in Los Angeles and in the small talk we were just talking about music in this way that I don\u2019t remember talking about at Atlantic. Immediately being in the room with Anti- and talking about things that we like and aren\u2019t market-driven, we just immediately felt, \u2018This is fucking great\u2019. It was awesome to be in a room and not have somebody ask you if you want to hear the new Kid Rock<\/a> single. That happened at some point early on at Atlantic.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t get it twisted: we had the antithesis of most people\u2019s major label experience. We were able to make the records how we wanted to make them, there wasn\u2019t someone coming in and saying, \u2018I don\u2019t hear a single\u2019. Our successes were our successes and our failures were our failures, at least from a critical perspective. Atlantic did a wonderful job, certainly in the States.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can try and sell this narrative of a return back to our indie roots or something, and that\u2019s technically true, but overall we all just feel a lightness. If we wanted to make a record that was more in the vein of \u2018Laughing Stock\u2019 [Talk Talk<\/a>\u2019s 1991 classic] than \u2018Plans\u2019, no one would bat an eyelid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DeathDeath Cab For Cutie, 2026. Credit: Shervin Lainez<\/p>\n

Would it be too tidy a narrative to say that the Death Cab and Postal Service anniversary tours brought about any kind of sense of closure of a chapter?<\/p>\n

\u201cThose chapters are never closed because we\u2019re playing those songs so often live. We\u2019ll be playing songs I wrote when I was 20, and I\u2019m like, \u2018Oh that\u2019s a cringe-y lyric, what the fuck?\u2019 \u2013 then alongside songs we wrote last year. It\u2019s never closing a chapter, but spending that much time with my 25-year-old self was illuminating. There are these moments where I\u2019d be playing a song from \u2018These Are The Facts And We\u2019re Voting Yes\u2019, \u2018Something About Planes\u2019 or \u2018Photo Album\u2019 and it\u2019s like, \u2018I really like the interplay of these elements\u2019. I find myself asking the question: \u2018Why don\u2019t I do this anymore?\u2019 or \u2018When and why did I stop doing this?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe conclusion I came to was that once I started recording on a computer, the songwriting process changed pretty dramatically. I started to diverge away from the process of how I wrote songs for the first three or four records. It kind of started with \u2018Asphalt Meadows\u2019, but certainly with this record, I decided that instead of fucking around with a drum machine for a couple of hours or pulling drum loops from a folder, I would just record a bunch of drums myself in the spirit of how I would used to write a part that you could sing like a guitar part.<\/p>\n

\u201cI recorded myself doing all this drumming and then would start a lot of the songwriting process from there. They\u2019re not electronic elements, it\u2019s a human playing. I felt like my hands found places on the guitar that felt both new and familiar. I would put a bass part on it that felt new and familiar. I found myself with these demos that didn\u2019t sound like the music we were making in the early \u201800s, but just the process of making music that way without all these found sounds and samples started to feel more organic and more like a band.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"JennyBen Gibbard and Jenny Lewis perform withThe Postal Service. Credit: Xavi Torrent\/Redferns<\/p>\n

It\u2019s said that the best music comes from imperfection, but music technology strives for perfection and the magic is lost\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI completely agree. I\u2019m working on this theory that there\u2019s such a lack of great rock records over the last 20 years, when rock \u2018n\u2019 roll has fallen so far out of fashion, because the methodology with which people were making those recordings stripped a lot of what made guitar music great out of it. With Pro-Tools, going beat detective on the drums, putting five guitars on with a computer, auto-tuning the backing vocals\u2026 once you have the option to fix everything, you lose something. As our producer John Congleton repeatedly said, \u2018Dude, in six months you\u2019re not gonna hear any of this stuff\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAside from the fact that the songs are amazing and that Cameron Winter<\/a> is such an amazing singer<\/a>, one of the many reasons that this Geese<\/a> record [\u2018Getting Killed<\/a>\u2019] has hit so hard for people is that it\u2019s just really fucking loose. This sounds like an album that came out before 25 years ago and it has life in it, there\u2019s oxygen in it, it feels like human beings making music. I can\u2019t imagine that record having the impact that it\u2019s had if it was cleaned up. In my own personal listening, I\u2019ve just been having this strange epiphany. These are the things that Jack White<\/a> has been saying for years, but things sounding a little off and not perfect is what makes rock music really work. It is the fundamental element in guitar-based music.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

What do you think about all the online psyop debate<\/a> around Geese?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is Geese\u2019s fourth record. That discourse around them being a psyop or an industry plant is fucking ridiculous. The only valid point I saw was that we are given the impression in a streaming economy and a social media world that we all have access to the same levers to promote ourselves. The reality is that it\u2019s not true. Amplification of posts, the new payola, etc, but those guys are amazing and they deserve everything that\u2019s coming their way. As a fan, I\u2019m just really excited to see what they do next.<\/p>\n

\u201cI also hope that they as human beings have the fortitude to weather the weight of expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back to your album. What can you tell us about how you used the music to make sense of the fallout from your divorce?<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I always do for every record, I\u2019m writing a lot and we had about 90 songs. I started writing around 2023 and the last songs were written around the middle of last year. I started to realise that if this record was going to be about divorce and be \u2013 to oversimplify it \u2013 a \u2018breakup record\u2019, then it\u2019s going to be the result and I want that exploration to be internal. I didn\u2019t want any of the bitterness of, \u2018You did this\u2019, \u2018fuck you\u2019, \u2018I\u2019m so glad I\u2019m not with you any more\u2019. I kind of already wrote that record, it\u2019s called \u2018Kintsugi\u2019 [after split from Zooey Deschanel<\/a>].\u201d<\/p>\n

That was over a decade ago, too\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m almost 50-years-old. Outside of just not wanting to repeat myself, I also feel like being older and actually being in constant therapy, I\u2019ve hopefully developed an emotional maturity that maybe I didn\u2019t have before.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"DeathDeath Cab for Cutie \u2013 CREDIT: Shervin Lainez<\/p>\n

Most break-up records try to say, \u2018I\u2019m strong, I\u2019ve got this\u2019, but you repeatedly sing, \u2018I can\u2019t hold it together\u2019 throughout\u2026\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s just being honest. I feel that the records that people connect to the most are the ones that are the most transparent. There is a tipping point with that, where you tip into self-loathing and whining. I\u2019m sure there are moments I probably tipped off the edge of that. At the end of the day, one of the most powerful things to say to people is, \u2018You\u2019re not alone\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt this period in human history, not just the political climate that we\u2019re living in, it\u2019s incredibly important that we all look at each other and say, \u2018This is OK, I don\u2019t feel OK right now\u2019. Not so much because I want you to look at me and I want attention, but because I know that you\u2019re not OK either\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Radiohead\u2019s Ed O\u2019Brien recently said the same to us<\/a> \u2013 that it\u2019s no surprise how much young people are struggling\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cWell no, and I\u2019m a Gen-Xer so my internal programming and default has always been, \u2018What the fuck? Fucking get over it! Come on!\u2019 That\u2019s the \u201890s of us. At the same time, I find the conversations around what\u2019s wrong with Gen-Z and Gen Alpha to be rather ridiculous and insulting. What young people are walking into as adults today is unlikely anything we have ever seen; certainly any post-war generation. They are starting so far behind where their parents and their grandparents started in regards to how they\u2019re able to make a life for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

And they\u2019ll still be called \u2018entitled\u2019\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea of owning a house is out. The idea of having a career? Good luck, AI is coming along. Can you blame kids for trying to be influencers? Can you blame them for getting into crypto? Can you really look down upon someone who\u2019s just trying to find a way to keep their head above water? It\u2019s incredibly insulting and stinks of this attitude of \u2018I went through the trenches, why can\u2019t you?\u2019 Now a trench is not a home, it\u2019s renting for the rest of your life. Young people are very easy to pick on and they always have been.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a real fiery post-punk energy to the album, especially across the likes of \u2018How Heavenly A State\u2019, \u2018Envy The Birds\u2019 and \u2018Punching The Flowers\u2019. What sounds were you reaching for to translate how you were feeling?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we were starting the Death Cab and Postal Service tour, we had this filmmaker named Lance Bangs out with this. He was filming a bunch of stuff for us and we\u2019ve known him for a long time. He brought Ian MacKaye [Minor Threat<\/a>, Fugazi]<\/a> to the show and we got to go to the Dischord House afterwards. That was just an unbelievable experience. I said to our bass player Nick [Harmer], \u2018I\u2019m really glad that 47-year-old me got to do that and not 27-year-old me\u2019. As a massive Minor Threat and Fugazi fan, 27-year-old me would have been freaking out. I wouldn\u2019t have been able to handle it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIan was just a lovely guy and from that point on I found myself just listening to an egregious amount of Fugazi. In no world am I saying that I was trying to make us sound like Fugazi, because no one can make us sound like Fugazi, but what I took from those records was that they\u2019re relatively simply arranged: it\u2019s drums, bass and two guitars. There are not a lot of overdubs or adornments and they\u2019re some of the most heavy and powerful records in my collection. I had this renaissance with Fugazi and found myself recognising how the way that we\u2019ve made records for the last 20 years as a culture has just failed us in terms of presenting the power of what a band can be.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Did you feel young again?<\/p>\n

\u201cI just don\u2019t want to make old people music! I feel like we\u2019re all just raging against the dying of the light here. We cannot control getting older, but we can control getting old. We can control not getting comfortable, keeping the tempos up, the level of distortion. We can make music that feels like an extension of the things that are and were the most important to us, without trying to have the equivalent of a musical dye-job in our hair.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given everything you went through that inspired this record, how are you now?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m much better! There\u2019s been the actual therapy, and then writing my way through this has always been incredibly illuminating for me. This period of my life is about three years in my rear view. We move on the best we can. The older I get, the more I realise that one of\u00a0 the biggest lies in songwriting is the \u2018I\u2019m over you\u2019 song. That, \u2018I don\u2019t need you any more\u2019 song. Those are the things we tell ourselves to move forward.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe move forward in life, but you bring a piece of it with you. You can either choose to look at that period as a waste of your time or want those 10 years back, but I refuse to think of it like that. I think, \u2018I was with this person for 10 years, we had eight good ones and two kinda bad ones, but I wouldn\u2019t change any of them\u2019. That person will always be with me somewhere in my heart as is everybody who has been in my life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe short answer is: \u2018I\u2019m doing great\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\u2018I Built You A Tower\u2019 by Death Cab For Cutie is out now. A full UK and European tour kicks off in September. Visit here<\/a> for tickets and more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Death Cab For Cutie\u2019s Ben Gibbard has spoken to NME about how divorce and making peace with his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627776,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,3583,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-627775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-indie","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}