Death Cab For Cutie Navigates ‘Riptides’ Of Grief On New Album ‘I Built You A Tower’

Death Cab for Cutie announced their 11th studio album, I Built You A Tower, and shared the record’s lead single, “Riptides.” The LP, the band’s first on ANTI- Records, arrives on June 5.

DCFC — Ben Gibbard, Nicholas Harmer, Jason McGerr, Dave Depper and Zac Rae — return to an independent label after two decades on Atlantic Records. I Built You A Tower was recorded during sessions held over three weeks at Animal Rites in Los Angeles as well as at the band members’ homes in Seattle, Bellingham, Los Angeles and Portland.

The 11-track effort found the band reuniting with producer and engineer John Congleton after celebrating the 20th anniversary of seminal albums Transatlanticism and Plans. “The anniversary tours exorcised any nostalgia in our systems,” Depper explained. “We felt part of this powerful force greater than all of us and went into the studio with a sense of, how can we capture that feeling and put it into something new?”

Harmer added, “The whole experience of this record got us back to the earliest versions of this band: If the musicians in the room like what we’re working on, that’s enough. We reconnected with the confidence that comes with that.”

I Built You A Tower gets its title from the proverbial tower Ben Gibbard built as a way to protect himself after straining to front both Death Cab and The Postal Service on an arena tour while still reeling from struggles in his his personal life. “There’s this need to find a place in ourselves to put loss and grief,” Gibbard noted. “A place that can hold it so we can move on with our lives. But there are these moments where the trauma breaks out of that shell we created for it.”

Ben Gibbard also suffered deep personal loss. “’Riptides’ is about the challenge of dealing with personal struggles as the world around us experiences tragedy and loss on an unfathomable scale,” added Gibbard. “And how when these two elements intertwine themselves in our psyches, it feels utterly paralyzing.”

Watch the Jason Lester-directed video for Death Cab For Cutie’s “Riptides” below:

I Built You A Tower Tracklist

1. Full of Stars
2. Punching The Flowers
3. Pep Talk
4. I Built You A Tower (a)
5. Envy The Birds
6. Stone Over Water
7. How Heavenly a State
8. Trap Door
9. Riptides
10. The Flavor of Metal
11. I Built You A Tower (b)

Death Cab For Cutie will support I Built You A Tower with an extensive world tour. The journey brings the band across the U.S. and Canada in July and August. A European run follows in September and October.