Cute Stuff
Death Cab For Cutie
The Open Door EP
(Atlantic/Barsuk)
***1/2
I can’t help but feel that there isn’t a real reason for this release. Sure, it’s full of the leftovers from Narrow Stairs — but these surplus songs attempt nothing new. Perhaps as a way to milk the acclaim of what’s arguably Death Cab’s best release, The Open Door EP continues to bring the despair. For a band with this much popularity in both the sad circles and with the music supervisors on hit twentysomething TV shows, this five-song set reveals a Ben Gibbard still unable to find his way out of his ever-present love-funk. On “A Diamond and a Tether,” a man wonders why he can’t be in love while admitting he has “fantasies about being alone”— mildly amusing, considering the always-woeful Gibbard has recently gotten engaged. The EP’s highlight, “Talking Bird,” isn’t even a leftover, but a completely stripped, cutesy demo of a Narrow Stairs track. Still, the songs on The Open Door EP won’t disappoint any Death Cab fans — even a collection of b-sides as sparse and unadventurous as this one adds to the band’s ever-growing catalogue of melancholy and heartache.
CURTIS WRIGHT
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