Something About Airplanes
Studio album by
Death Cab for Cutie
ReleasedAugust 18, 1998
Recorded1998
StudioHall of Justice
Genre
Length43:18
LabelBarsuk/Elsinor
ProducerChris Walla
Death Cab for Cutie chronology
You Can Play These Songs with Chords
(1997)		 Something About Airplanes
(1998)		 We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes
(2000)

Something About Airplanes is the debut studio album by indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, released August 18, 1998, on Barsuk Records. A tenth-anniversary edition of the album was released November 25, 2008, featuring redesigned artwork, liner notes by Sean Nelson, and a bonus disc including the band's first ever Seattle performance at the Crocodile Cafe in February 1998.[3]

Early recordings of five songs from the album can be found on the You Can Play These Songs with Chords compilation.

Background

Airplanes was created at the group's rented house off of Ellis Street in Bellingham.[4] It was recorded on a reel-to-reel eight-track recorder.[5] With Walla's bedroom in the attic, the band inserted a microphone through a hole in the floor to the living room where vocals were tracked. Gibbard's writing was primarily influenced by Idaho indie rockers Built to Spill; in an interview with Vice, he noted that Perfect from Now On, the band's 1997 opus, was "the only thing I was listening to at that point." He continued: "There’s some flagrant Built to Spill ripoffs on that record. I was really influenced by Rex and Bedhead and a lot of these slower kinds of bands."[6]

Airplanes was released through Barsuk and Elsinor Records, the label that issued the group's debut cassette, You Can Play These Songs with Chords.[7] They pressed an initial 1,000 copies of Airplanes, which Gibbard found confounding: "We were imagining we were going to be carrying around boxes of our own records for the rest of our lives," he joked.[4] For the album's decade anniversary, Barsuk released an expanded edition of the LP, coupling it with a live concert the band performed at the Crocodile Cafe in 1998.[8][9]

Composition

At the time of the album's writing, Gibbard was just coming into his own as a songwriter. He had hoped to pen lyrics he considered "wildly descriptive and very dense and interesting," but later felt its purported profundity reads as nonsensical.[10] Likewise, his singing voice is slightly different than on later recordings, with an adenoidal nasal tone.[8]

"The Face That Launched 1000 Shits" is a cover of an original song by The Revolutionary Hydra, a band that DCFC guitarist Chris Walla and lead singer/guitarist Ben Gibbard belonged to. The song was written by then-bandmate Jay Chilcote. The song’s title is a play on the phrase “The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships”, attributed to Helen of Troy whose supposed unmatched beauty led to the Trojan War (after Paris, Prince of Troy, kidnapped her from Sparta and her husband King Menelaus).

Artwork

Despite the title referring to airplanes, the image on the album cover is of a rowboat. The image is actually seen through a hole in the booklet cover and a sheet of vellum.[11] Like some of the band's 2000 releases, the text is set entirely in lower case.

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[1]
The Austin Chronicle[12]
Paste8.6/10[13]
Pitchfork8.1/10[14]
PopMatters7/10[15]
Rolling Stone[16]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[17]
Tiny Mix Tapes3.5/5[18]

An early review of the album from CMJ columnist Glen Sarvady wrote that the album "has the aura of a young band still crafting its own voice, but working fertile ground and already producing some impressive results."[19] Ian Cohen at Pitchfork writes the album "create[s] a sonic blueprint that's subtly innovative [...] Something About Airplanes instead sounds like a private affair, which is one reason it's so treasured amongst diehards."[14] Barry Walters at Rolling Stone writes that "Not every cut on their debut is that assured: Guitarist-producer Chris Walla hadn't yet mastered the studio, and singer Ben Gibbard's articulate moodiness isn't consistently memorable."[16]

Morgan Enos at Billboard launched a celebration of the album for its twentieth anniversary in 2018, writing, "if you want to hear [Death Cab's] sound in chrysalis, you can’t do much better than Airplanes. The album embraces a homespun, basement vibe, but the lyrics prove that Gibbard essentially came out as a perceptive, nuanced writer fully-formed — and with a band that could bring his songs to the light."[20] Similarly, KEXP ran a piece in commemoration, with writer Dusty Henry commenting: "Airplanes [is] such a fascinating and thrilling listen in the Death Cab canon. It's not a benchmark for the band to be measured against. It's a mystery covered in other mysteries [... the] murkiest entry in the band’s catalog. A twisted knot of wobbly guitars and banging drums held together by Gibbard's most obtuse poetry."[21]

Track listing

No.TitleWriter(s)Length
1."Bend to Squares"Ben Gibbard, Christopher Walla4:33
2."President of What?"Gibbard4:01
3."Champagne from a Paper Cup"Gibbard2:38
4."Your Bruise"Gibbard, Walla4:19
5."Pictures in an Exhibition"Gibbard3:49
6."Sleep Spent"Gibbard, Walla3:37
7."The Face That Launched 1000 Shits"Jay Chilcote3:41
8."Amputations"Gibbard4:54
9."Fake Frowns"Gibbard, Walla4:30
10."Line of Best Fit"Gibbard7:16
Reissue bonus disc – Live at the Crocodile Cafe, February 1998
No.TitleLength
11."Your Bruise" 
12."President of What?" 
13."Fake Frowns" 
14."Sweet and Tender Hooligan" (feat. Sean Nelson) 
15."State Street Residential" 
16."Amputations" 
17."Pictures in an Exhibition" 

Personnel

Death Cab for Cutie

Additional personnel

  • Abi Hall – vocals on "Line of Best Fit"
  • Erika Jacobs – writing and cello arrangement on "Bend to Squares" and "The Face That Launched 1000 Shits"
  • Tony Lash – mastering

Live at the Crocodile Cafe, February 1998

Notes

  1. 1 2 Abebe, Nitsuh. "Something About Airplanes – Death Cab for Cutie". AllMusic. Retrieved November 4, 2011.
  2. ↑ Fallon, Patric (July 22, 2014). "30 Emo Songs: Late 90s & Early 2000s Essentials". Stereogum. Retrieved October 5, 2021.
  3. ↑ "Death Cab For Cutie: News". Official Death Cab for Cutie Website. Archived from the original on October 3, 2008. Retrieved October 3, 2008.
  4. 1 2 Rietmulder, Michael (May 11, 2019). "'It's all about Bellingham': How stars Death Cab for Cutie and ODESZA got their starts locally". Seattle Times. Retrieved July 2, 2022.
  5. ↑ Harrington, Richard (October 20, 2005). "Death Cab, Full Speed Ahead". The Washington Post. Retrieved July 2, 2022.
  6. ↑ Ozzi, Dan (August 9, 2018). "Ben Gibbard Ranks Death Cab for Cutie's Eight Albums". VICE. Retrieved July 2, 2022.
  7. ↑ "The House that Death Cab Built". archive.kitsapsun.com. December 3, 2006. Retrieved July 2, 2022.
  8. 1 2 "Death Cab's Ben Gibbard Talks "Something About Airplanes," Obama, The Postal Service". Rolling Stone. December 11, 2008. Retrieved July 2, 2022.
  9. ↑ Thompson, Paul (October 1, 2008). "Death Cab's Airplanes Gets Reissue, Stairs Due on Vinyl". Pitchfork. Retrieved July 2, 2022.
  10. ↑ Gibbard, Ben (May 11, 2018). "Ben Gibbard on the Meaning of Life, 10 Years Later". pastemagazine.com. Retrieved July 2, 2022.
  11. ↑ Tim Frommer. "DAA Artist Archive: Death Cab for Cutie". Dancing About Architecture. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved April 13, 2008.
  12. ↑ Stevens, Darcie (December 19, 2008). "Death Cab for Cutie: Something About Airplanes (Barsuk)". The Austin Chronicle. Retrieved July 9, 2013.
  13. ↑ Killingsworth, Jason (January 21, 2009). "Death Cab For Cutie: Something About Airplanes (Limited-Edition Deluxe 2-disc)". Paste. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved July 8, 2013.
  14. 1 2 Cohen, Ian (November 26, 2008). "Death Cab for Cutie: Something About Airplanes". Pitchfork. Retrieved November 4, 2011.
  15. ↑ Jayasuriya, Mehan (December 4, 2008). "Death Cab for Cutie: Something About Airplanes (Deluxe Edition)". PopMatters. Retrieved July 8, 2013.
  16. 1 2 Walters, Barry (December 11, 2008). "Something About Airplanes (Deluxe Edition)". Rolling Stone. Retrieved July 8, 2013.
  17. ↑ Catucci, Nick (2004). "Death Cab for Cutie". In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian (eds.). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. pp. 221–22. ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.
  18. ↑ Mr P. "Death Cab for Cutie – Something about Airplanes". Tiny Mix Tapes. Retrieved November 4, 2011.
  19. ↑ "Reviews". CMJ New Music Monthly. CMJ Network, Inc. March 1, 1999. ISSN 1074-6978.
  20. ↑ Enos, Morgan (August 18, 2018). "Death Cab For Cutie's 'Something About Airplanes' Turns 20: A Track-by-Track Retrospective". Billboard. Retrieved July 2, 2022.
  21. ↑ "Definitely Shaking and Daring To Be Great: Thoughts on Death Cab For Cutie's Something About Airplanes 20 Years Later". KEXP 90.3 FM - Where the Music Matters. Retrieved July 2, 2022.
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