20 Years of We Have the facts and We're Voting Yes

03/21/2020

Blog 5: 20 Years of We Have the facts and We're Voting Yes

Today marks the 20th anniversary of Death Cab for Cutie's 2nd studio album "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes". To many die hard fans, this is considered the best album that Death Cab has ever put out. The finer details of how great this album is may be of value to a very small pocket of the Death Cab community and is thus likely to be largely of no interest to the mainstream. However, for those people that were and are being affected by it, there is definitely a reason for following along the legacy it began. 

I think that We Have the Facts lies at the heart of what Death Cab for Cutie is all about. It is the album where you can listen to a band that has found its footing in their songwriting; where they commit to a sound that is uniquely theirs. We can see Ben Gibbard's poignant story telling ability of very specific moments of his life interlaced with melodies that sound happy but saccharine. Couple this with Chris Walla's contribution to the production of the album his intricate guitar work alongside Ben's, mediated by Nick Harmer's best bass work. 

This album was released before I will Follow You Into The Dark or Transatlanticism, both mainstream successes (the former a single and the latter a treasured LP) that put Death Cab on the map. The pressure to record and write wasn't driven by momentum but rather from a commitment to the arts. Ben Gibbard drums on most of the songs in this album because their previous drummer had quit the band for a more stable line of work. From being a hobby band with a quirky name, Death Cab at this point committed to a serious project, wanting to see how things play out with the chemistry and synergy of its band members. 

With all this historical context, We Have the Facts' spirit and driving force is established; but what about the content itself? How should one listen to the album? Well, the album is widely accepted to be a concept album; an album where all the songs contribute to the whole album, centered around a theme. Many tout the concept of this album to represent a story about a "ruined relationship", essentially making it a breakup album. I hesitate to commit to this, especially when you listen to the album trying to convince yourself that it is the case. But there is precedent, of course, and remains one way to interpret the album. Before Genius lyrics was a thing, songmeanings.com was the place to discuss lyrics and the song in general (those "good ol' days").

I imagine the "breakup" interpretation to go along these lines– the first song, "Title track" sets the stage for shaky foundations in the relationship. That ending mantra at the outro, "I rushed this, we moved too fast, tripped into the guest room", sums up this sentiment. 

Next, we have "The Employment Pages", where the narrator tells of the circumstances the relationship finds itself in "occupying the cracks of the urban streets".  This song would thus be providing more context on the setting but witholding any direct sentiments about the relationship, instead focusing on the frustration on finding employment (playing music so loud the neighbors ask them to turn it down). This follows "Title Track"'s sense of foreboding. We have a relationship that began from a one night stand that was doomed to fail. "And it was true that I was truly failing". What makes the "breakup album" interpretation strong here is because this line on its own merely speaks frustration about not finding work but is more cathartic when considered in what's to come. But the narrator is restless while being "Idle now, [he rearranges] the furniture as [she] sleeps", trying to be productive. We can see the female counterpart in the relationship as not very active, and by a stretch, indifferent to the scenario. She was "gone and [the narrator] was home calling around" for work. 

Connecting the dots

The third song, For What Reason, finally comes to the fore, building up from a soft piano/guitar intro to a loud and brazen declaration "This won't be the last you hear of me, it's just the start!". We get a clue to the off-stage breakup and how this song denotes that "bitterness I can't foresee". We can infer that this was not a clean breakup– she was apologizing with "phrases like 'I thought you knew' while keeping me in hot pursuit". She has moved on, perhaps rather quickly to someone else, while leading the narrator on all along. And the narrator had to connect the dots, "tracing the plot finds" to imagine "skin touching [each other's] skin" and how "absence follows". For the breakup interpretation, we still don't have the whole picture: okay she did a dick move by leading him on, maybe keeping him as a backup but what do the previous songs have to do with this? Well, Title Track establishes her allure: "I must admit I was charmed by your advances, your advantage left me helplessly into you"; and despite his best efforts! "I tried my best to keep my distance from your dress but call-response overturns convictions every time". And the Employment pages metaphorically shows how much effort the narrator put into improving himself despite "truly failing". This third song solidifies his resolve he sings "In the end, I win every time as ink remains. Sour tastes prevail as you play back the tape machine". He is the poet of this story that everyone will listen to, including her: the song is catchy and sweet but bitter and resentful; which again, is what I think makes Death Cab as a band.

Lowell, Massachusetts 

We have next the fourth song– Lowell, Ma. This song personally has one of my favorite and most intricate bass lines of Death Cab's repertoire. Seems to me that this song was a precursor to a lot of songs about how places have changed (see Why You'd Want to Live Here, Gold Rush, You Moved Away, Teardrop Windows; and to some extent Crooked Teeth, Stable song/Stability, Good help is so hard to find). But I digress. The music is very road-trippy and catchy, which helps drive the point of the lyrics: someone is leaving Lowell, MA. In the Breakup Interpretation, we take this to be the narrator's ex or maybe the narrator himself. This song plays to the "Employment Pages" trope of showing rather than telling. We get a couple of lines describing the city's "cityscapes crumbling... skyscrapers sink into the ground". But the two main catchy lines that repeat over and over, "I thought that you had come to expect more" and "Don't go holding out on me now". Metaphors abound, the city itself could be a metaphor for the relationship "crumbling". There's nothing left, not even the music from the radio towers as he drives away. Is this the song that he's referring to in For What Reason? Possibly but it's very tongue in cheek (I mean all of the songs themselves are, aren't they?). With this set down, we move on to the next song. (Though I do admit that this is where Jack Kerouac was born and we know Ben likes him a lot, especially On the Road and Big Sur, much like the 1975 does but I digress).

Interstate 405

405 is the 5th song in the album, extending the "Lowell, Ma" driving metaphor interstate. Meditating on the 405 interstate, the narrator takes the highway to be a metaphor for their relationship. The first line of both verses provide these moments of commentary: "I took the 405 and drilled a stake down into your center and stated that it's never ever been better than this" and "Misguided by the 405 'cause it lead me to an alcoholic summer, I missed the exit to your parents' house hours ago". Here's another instance of the particularity of Ben's songwriting: the 405 is very confusing to drive in and I imagine pre-Waze/Google maps it'd be a nightmare for someone not seasoned in its twists and turns. This is the path of the relationship that the two take and the narrator plays with, following with lyrics harkening back to the bitter resentment of For What Reason– "You keep twisting the truth, that keeps me thrown askew". Underlying these poignant remarks, more narration of how the relationship went is sung "I hung my favorite shirt on the floorboard, wrinkled up from pulling, pushing and tasting, tasting" and "red wine and the cigarettes, hide your bad habits underneath the patio, patio". The mismatch and masks that was done to keep up appearances, give small hints of vice and inauthenticity. Driving away seemed to be the solution in Lowell, Ma, but 405 pushes back, haunting the activity with wavering regret (the bass lines intermittent booming helps highlight this). 

More on Car Metaphors

The idea of driving once again continues in the slow Little Fury Bugs. In the context of the breakup interpretation, this is a song where the narrator is addressing his ex. There's usually a point of contention here about this because the song seems to be about opportunistic fake friends, or what Ben refers to as "casual friends". But I think this is only one side of the song. The narrator's observations about these friends that only remember her name are juxtaposed with his growing feeling of dissatisfaction in the relationship. What makes the song powerful is how these feelings are portrayed musically. The first verse all the way through the chorus and second verse has just guitars playing a slow, sleepy tune, reflecting the boredom of these "casual" friends and their superficial intentions. The second verse represents the other side, the dissatisfied side. The narrator felt more at home in the back of the car– that is, these trips were more homelike than home, which we could infer as the core of his relationship. He lulls about this trip with the most watered down description: "through the evening the engine kept on, until we hit Chicago and decided to stop". It's at this point where the chorus, the initial dismissive thought "but you're always on time, so", is repeated with a loud kick drum. This is repeated twice before the guitars take over to lull the tune back to the beginning again (similar to Title Track's outro). 

"Company call" can refer to the director addressing the "company" during rehearsals or after a show (as opposed to a curtain call where the company comes at the end and bows to the audience)

And we've arrived at the climax of the album: Company Calls. The song begins with a short dancing drum and guitar introduction before the narrator sings one of the most bittersweet and catchy melodies in the album. It's honestly hard to describe this song because it's better to just listen to it but here we go. The song is sonically very "hi-fi" (like in the second verse of Title track where before the recording sounded "lo-fi", meant to talk about the transition into the new millenium in a very tongue-in-cheek way as it was released in the turn of the century). Because of this hi-fi, it sounds like a proper indie-rock-pop sound, where the narrator is addressing the general audience (while obviously referring to the ex). The lyrics, at first are different than the previous intimate ones. Maybe this was the one that he was referring to in For What Reason. But as a whole, the story follows that the narrator heard of his ex getting engaged. We have another style of lyrical writing that Ben uses that is more "show" than tell. These lyrics seem more a collection of distinct writings, pithy expressions that describe how he felt upon receiving word, with the chorus being the only one with direct reference to the institution of marriage qua "mock-shrine". Perhaps these were thoughts he had meant to send in the postcard he'd send, expressing the intention to "keep [his] distance 'cause the complications cloud it all". But just like Title Track, which I think this song has a spiritual connection with, he's not over it, with the most indulgent confession: "Your wedding figurines: I'd melt so I could drink them in". 

The music slows down at this point, with descending guitar and drum figures but no drums; begetting the sound of a xylophone playing an ascending/descending line, expressing ambivalence. Is he going to mail a greeting or attend the wedding and indulge in that fantasy? After dwelling on this, the song picks back up again and recapitulates back to the first verse: 

I'll take the best of your bad moods and dress them up to make a better you, cause all the company calls amount to one paycheck.

He has decided his fate: looks like he will go after all and not only that, he will take this sentiment: to convince her that he's better for her and can make a "better you" out of her; all while at the wedding which he neither part of the "company" (theater term to refer to the actors that make up the play) nor is he paying for it.

Wedding Crashers, am I right? (copyright NY times)

Company Calls Epilogue follows immediately after its namesake, picking up from the narrator's resolve to act on his heart's drunken desire and to tie up the loose ends of its strings. With an electric guitar and a microphone with a delayed drunken reverb effect, the voice that rings through is both lucid and opaque. He quotes the line he sung in Company Calls: "Synapse to synapse, the possibility's thin" resolving the prediction that "possibilities will thin or fade", choosing the former. To further the unity of the concept album, the repeated phrase "synapse to synapse" seems remarkably close to For What Reason's "skin touching skin" and alludes to the "Absence follows" lyric after. Our narrator sings while at the wedding itself, using present tense to express "I'm dressed up for free drinks and family greetings on your wedding... date". His intentions were put into action, he did indeed take the plastic figures on their wedding cake but doesn't directly say that he's melted it, yet. He describes them as being "so real", despite being fake plastic. Is he doing the right thing? He also follows up more sentiments he wrote, addressing his initial decision to stay away: "And I kept a distance, the complications cloud". He describes how he received the invite as an email invite with a picture of "girls with pigtails" running from "little boys wearing bowties their parents bought". 

But with all this, he nevertheless is at the wedding, with the pre-chorus to chorus narrating: 

"Crashing through the parlor doors, what was your first reaction? Screaming, drunk, disorderly, I'll tell you mine. You were the one, but I can't spit it out when the date's been set. The white routine to be ingested inaccurately." 

Oh yes, he fully intends to melt those plastic figurines to "ingest [them] inaccurately", which is dark and indulgent but fully permissible in its cathartic clothing, driven by a mad passion for this one alluring girl; his own writing being used against him. More imagery and recapitulation of "synapse to synapse" comes in the second first while adding comments about how marriages don't normally end well: "people would turn to see who's making the racket. It's not the first time"... "when the casualty rate's near 100 percent, and there isn't a pension for second best or for hardly moving". He's airing out his pessimistic perception of how this whole thing will turn out, but is it for love anymore? Wasn't the narrator regretful of the relationship which largely wavered while he was in it? What did the Employment Pages or Little Fury Bugs accomplish if not to help him recognize that the relationship wasn't as he thought it was? But even if the lyrics say so, the music disagrees and paints these emotions in ruinous beauty. The pre-chorus chorus lines repeat over and over after this, ending with a repeated guitar riff on G, which feels like it wants to go somewhere but it doesn't, instead the whole band (drums, bass and acoustic guitar) and a piano (that sounds like the xylophone from the previous song) dwell with the motif building up to an A major and F minor, chords that do not resolve the song but rather give a feeling of defeat and resignation after putting a lot of effort and the frustration that comes along with it.

The band drops out and we're left with a lo-fi acoustic guitar playing the chorus and a filter on the voice, the haunting delay removed, showing a unity between intentions; singing purely with a slight alteration to the lyric– instead of "you were", we get:

"You are the one, but I can't spit it out when the date's been set. The white routine to be ingested inaccurately"

"An homage to the one the narrator lost"

Almost like an epilogue to the epilogue (or perhaps the ending credits song), the next track is No Joy in Mudville. This song begins with a xylophone, bass, slow kick-drum pattern and guitar introduction. Going full on break-up interpretation (ignoring the references to Lou Reed's musical career), this song situates itself as an homage to the one the narrator lost. More with the very specific lyric-writing, this song indulges in what the narrator sees as the city of New York in the eyes of his ex and the influence she had on it as "the king of a gloomy disruption that surfaced when you would sing". He seems to be retracing the steps of where she thought was important "to a brownstown up three flights of stairs" and "reading the pavement in every word you would speak". Again, this is one of those songs that are hard to maintain with the breakup interpretation. Another way to take this in the context of the album would be that the song seems to be aimed at "Lou Reed" and his influence on New York but see it as an allusion to his relationship with her. Not totally incomprehensible but not something that I can totally commit myself to. But nevertheless the lyrics are somewhat sweet "the overturned kick drum boom set the pace with incomparable cool, and if the tempo was lousy it was lost on all but you and your studies of fringe New York streets". Maybe there is some love and appreciation expressed lucidly after the catharsis of Company calls epilogue.

O-chem, anybody?

To tie it all off, the final track of We Have the Facts is Scientist Studies. Ben comes back to the setting he built on The Employment Pages, complementing the times of unemployment with the problems of rent and utilities: "Cold skin and bones and this latitude; we ain't paying until the heat comes through." and "Promises of payment were upon your shoulders constantly". This is another song that challenges the breakup interpretation, because I see it more directly as a song about how the band has committed itself to being their full-time occupation and also I believe Ben was an environmental science major ("but don't forget to entertain cause this is your first defense"). Although, there isn't any reason why they are mutually exclusive. The context drives the spirit which drives the content. In fact, this could be a sign that the narrator is looking more at the big picture of it all. He says "Four-year offense to the devoted type. I may have got an invitation, but I wasn't invited. But I thought that this meant something more than broken hearts and new addictions". Turning to college and the problems with rent, I think the person the narrator is addressing is himself, as he's turned to the arts as his defense. As the outro goes: "this is a first defense. This was a first defense. This is my last defense" (looks like some alpha-omega allusions played with). And these final lyrics to the album are topped off with a long held guitar chord, which then gets amplified with one tone that builds up to a deafening noise, held for about 10 seconds before it cuts off and the album ends. The clever context here is that this kind of feedback sound occurs after leaving your amplifier on after you strummed the last cord. It's as if the narrator has walked away from the music, leaving the feedback on before coming back to turn it off and end it for good. 

For me, this kind of intricacy that the band puts that allows for competing interpretations to hold true speaks of the universality of it. We can indulge into the concept album or listen to the songs on their own and relate to the songs from our own background. Music beckons the past, present and future and gathers it together to create a universal truth. I remember first listening to Title Track with headphones in after having listened to it on speakers. That lo-fi to hi-fi bit was insane. The song was catchy and I didn't even delve on the lyrics except for the ending outro. But also when I hear this song, I think of my own experiences and how they either do or do not measure up to this song as well as thinking of the intention behind the author as well. Listening to the album now at its 20th anniversary points to a future where I think there's always something to take and to give with this album moving forward. For me, and probably for many other fans, this album is timeless and something that should be celebrated, something to come and gather us all to listen in on the record that made the band who they are.