Kintsugi
Death Cab for Cutie named their eighth studio album after a Japanese art movement in which broken ceramics are fused together again with precious metals. It’s a symbolic statement from a band at a crossroads: though Kintsugi is their last release with founding guitarist and longtime producer Chris Walla, its elegantly layered indie rock bears his considerable influence. Before blossoming into a quietly devastating break-up tune—frontman Ben Gibbard’s specialty— opener “No Room in Frame” starts with a hypnotic instrumental snippet that Walla weaves throughout. Both the breathtaking guitars of “Ingenue” and the elegiac beauty of “You’ve Haunted Me All My Life” showcase dynamics nearly twenty years in the making.
Kintsugi is Death Cab's first album without Chris Walla. It was produced by Rich Costey, who has worked with Muse and Foster the People, and though it has been framed as a new beginning, little of Kintsugi gives the impression that Gibbard’s motivation to reboot Death Cab is matched by legitimate inspiration.
The first words on Death Cab For Cutie’s new album Kintsugi are “I don’t know where to begin.” Despite ever-expanding production budgets, additional instrumentation, and the sonic explorations that come with a maturing band, the voice and lyrics of singer Ben Gibbard have always kept a personal, grounded intimacy to…
The Seattle veterans' final record with Chris Walla is ambitious, assured, and a fitting send-off.
As the mandatory explanation that comes with Death Cab for Cutie’s latest full-length album goes: Kintsugi: the Record was…
Eight albums in – Death Cab For Cutie are born again; a little cracked, but all the more golden for it.
Death Cab for Cutie's eighth full-length album, 2015's Kintsugi, finds the group sliding further into the studio smoothness that marked 2011's Codes and Keys.
“You’ve haunted me all my life,” runs Ben Gibbard’s refrain near the midpoint of Death Cab For Cutie’s latest. The feeling’s somewhat mutual.
In some ways, Kintsugi, the eighth studio album by Death Cab for Cutie, is a return to form for the band. Lush arrangements blend with elect...
Kintsugi, Death Cab for Cutie's newest album and the follow-up to 2011's Codes and Keys, takes its title from the Japanese art of piecing broken pottery back together; this is especially apt, given recent changes to the group.
Though it’s a return to form for the band, Kintsugi falters is in its sacrifice of momentum for structure.
Marked by departures, this is an understandably sombre record, and its epic indie rock is occasionally overwrought<br /><br />