shit dude, travis called them “the rem of our generation”

I put the kibosh on their first album for being too “Built to Spill.” I still think I was right. It was Oregon in the ’90s, obviously, because Built to Apill was an abundant and acceptable reference point. In the first part of summer, 2000, Joe and I rode bikes to see Death Cab play the Meow Meow, 300-capacity, all ages so BlowPops and Select Black Cherry shilled in place of beer, one of the first shows with their old drummer Michael, who moonlit as a clerk at Everyday Music and sold us Joe Pass records for probably way too cheap. We listened to Joe Pass’ ’70s jazz guitar *Virtuoso* & Genesis Lamb Lies Down on Broadway like every goddamn day that summer (so much prog, so much Timex Social Club on cassette), and I remember thinking Death Cab were mushy. Not mushy-love-mushy, but mushy, smushy; not distinctly defined. So hot off the release of their major-label debut–and long after The OC began kowtowing to the ad-Christ–is probably a silly time to come around on Death Cab. But fuck it: homeslice has the voice of a pedicurist, a thurrapist, and/or the lady running the $15/hour water-massage booth at the Sea-Tac mall, alabaster and nuzzling and lingering to assuage the purge. Ben Gibbard and I are the same age, we have always been the same age, but right now i can look tracks 1, 7, and 9 in their pupils and something registers, something resonates. I got you, Gibs.
I don’t know if this makes me zeitgeistical post facto or what. My friend, a dedicated fan, thinks “What Sarah Said” is the only truly stand-out song. Not sure I can really tell the difference. But I listened to it and I like Plans.