The Friday Dispatch
Death Cab for Cutie, Moyka, Roger Sanchez, and Ea Othilde
Ben Gibbard’s long way home
Two decades in, Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard has abandoned the role of the aggrieved narrator and found a new acceptance of his past and the band's legacy, he tells Best Fit for this week's cover story.
Gibbard's spent the better part of his life running — across mountain trails, through sold-out arenas, away from his own grief. But in 2023, halfway through a 100-mile race, he hit a wall. In the best shape of his life, he was supposed to finish hand-in-hand with a friend but instead found himself driving home at the halfway point, destroyed by the weight of his second divorce. "You can run on anger, you can run on joy, but you can't run on grief," a friend told him, and in that moment, something massive shifted.
For years, Gibbard had constructed an elaborate mental architecture to contain his pain — a skyline of buildings, each one housing different memories and versions of himself. But the tower he made to get through 2023 would become something else entirely: the blueprint for Death Cab's eleventh album I Built A Tower and a complete reimagining of how he writes about heartbreak. Looking back at his catalogue, Gibbard recognises an imbalance in how he portrayed the narrator's pain: "I've just come to the conclusion in my life that I was a willing participant in this relationship, and I made mistakes, and I could have done things better."
This is not the Ben Gibbard of Transatlanticism, the 2003 album that defined a generation's understanding of long-distance heartbreak but a man who has spent enough time examining the wreckage to understand his own complicity in it. "I didn't want to write another break-up record, because writing a break-up album when you're 48 is kind of different from when you're 26," he explains. "When you're dating someone and you break up, that's painful. But marriage and middle age are entirely different, and I wanted to write about this more internal place rather than a book report on the dissolution of my marriage." – Kayla Sandiford
Boards of Canada lead this week’s best releases with Inferno, one of the most anticipated returns of the decade (and thirteen years since their last). Playing the numbers game in the other direction, it wouldn’t be a new season without another Guided By Voices’ record and their 43rd record is titled Crawlspace Of The Pantheon. Static Dress drop another fusion of early-2000s post-hardcore and emo on their third record injury episode, an inevitable stop to world domination; Iceage make a huge return with the incredible For Love of Grace & the Hereafter; Manchester trio thistle have a new EP titled backflip; Hudson valley/London duo twee laptop due ear release second album Rumspringa; and Yottie – from rising South London collective PARADE - drops mixtape CASINO.
The introduction…
Meet 28-year-old Norwegian electro-pop artist Moyka – a perfect fit for fans of the Oklou / Caroline Polachek / PC Music cinematic universe. Her latest single, “Icarus,” is out now.
Hometown… Bergen, Norway.
Describe your sound… Melancholic, electronic, ethereal, alternative pop
Your favourite piece of gear… My SOMA Lyra-8 syntheziser.
Best place to take a solo trip… Tokyo, I imagine (although I've not been there yet).
Dream collaborator… Caroline Polachek.
Trend to scrap… Plastic surgery (it's cool to look like yourself).
Roger Sanchez on The Art of Noise
“So, here’s the thing, a lot of the things I love connect to breakdance tracks. So Art of Noise, “U.F.O.”, these are all tracks when I was a breakdancer that I’d be dancing to, that then became part of the hip-hop lexicon and then became part of house music and club museum in general.
Trevor Horn is an absolute genius. You’re talking about the man that did this, later on he produced Seal, “Video Killed the Radio Star.” I get very nerdy about the production aspect of it, and as a producer his sonic vision was amazing. The records just sounded massive, and that particular track was all about those huge drums. I can remember scratching all of that into my DJ sets and playing it for breakdancers.
But the interesting thing is, at that point in time, again, there wasn’t so much the genre-fication of records to work in the club. It was more what got people dancing. I think it was a little bit more creatively open at that point in time, because it’s really open to interpretation of how you utilise the elements of that to make it work on the dance floor.
I didn’t know who Trevor Horn was. I just heard Into Battle with the Art of Noise, I saw the album cover, and I had heard that being played. I’m like, ‘What the hell is this track?’ And then it was just so odd, but it’s just… the beats. It always comes down to the beats.”
Listen to the week in new music by following our Discovery playlist
Dropping at midnight every Thursday, follow our playlist for a taste of the best new music from the most exciting breaking artists. Leading the selection this week are new tracks from Mad Iris, Anja Elina Lin, mikey, Clutter, Maehem99, and coverstar Ea Othilde.
“I think people who create and write, it actually does flow – just flows from into their head, into their hand, and they right it down. It’s simple.” ― Paul McCartney
Thanks.