I don’t think anyone was particularly surprised when Death Cab for Cutie announced shortly after the release of last year’s somewhat disappointing Narrow Stairs that they’d be releasing an EP soon afterwards – the band has a pretty healthy habit of releasing EPs in-between albums. That ’soon’ ended up being the next year and here we are now.

The Open Door EP is pretty much the counter-part of Narrow Stairs. The band themselves have stated that all the songs in it are from the same sessions as the album was and that they’re left-overs only because they wouldn’t have fit the album’s mood. Or something. The good thing is that they’re not lying because indeed, sound-wise each of these could have made Narrow Stairs. The problem just comes in the fact that these aren’t anything particularly good.

Narrow Stairs’ disappointment isn’t in that it sucks but that about half of it’s somewhat wonky. Half of the tracks on the album are downright brilliant but during the others Death Cab for Cutie simply plodded like they’ve never done before for many, many albums, offering a bunch of sub-standard cuts that would have probably made alright b-sides if nothing else. Songs that you can easily remember how they go but that don’t raise reactions of any kind. The Open Door goes below that. The four original takes are all boring and somewhat derivative songs from a band who’s fronted by a man with an usually absolutely gorgeous songwriting talent. The pounding “My Mirror Speaks” comes off as the strongest but in the long run it gets trampled behind by the vast majority of what the band’s ever written.

The most interesting cut ends up being the demo version of “Talking Bird” stashed as the finalé of the EP. On album Talking Bird is a plodding bore, possibly the weakest song on Narrow Stairs. The demo throws away the full-band instrumentation and instead is just Gibbard and an ukulele. Suddenly the song catches much more wind beneath its wing, even if only because of my recent affection towards the ukulele. It’s still not a masterpiece but it manages to make itself more enjoyable than on the album.

Usually Death Cab’s EPs have tend to be interesting little minipieces, each with shiny gems hidden away from the main albums. Open Door lacks anything interesting and sadly shows the band without any of what makes them special. On Open Door, they sound terribly generic.

Tags: Death Cab for Cutie

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 8:08 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.