2023-08-17 18:11:10
In the slipstream of their great current studio album Asphalt Meadows (and its acoustic appendix). Death Cab for Cutie with An Arrow in the Wall a new standalone single.
In the anniversary year 2023 (keywords: Transatlanticism and Give Up) Ben Gibbard wants the number produced by John Congleton to be understood as a reminder: “An Arrow in the Wall is regarding the warning signs all around us in the 21st century that society-at-large is in decay. The arrow lodged in the wall might have missed this time, but it would be naive to assume the next one won’t also.”
A seductively stomping beat marches along with a minimalist groove, Gibbard leaves the catchy melody with vague psychedelic effects and cryptic lyrics (“This machine was built to be broken/ The strip mall teens were sniffing and swollen/ And I might not run fast enough to flee them/ There’s more than one way to get your freedom’) stroll around the song, which despite its repetitive basis never becomes monotonous because it is kept attractive by many small variables in the facets, which at some point (also at the very end once more, unfortunately without the following excess) even flirts with the climax in the noise implosion – but ultimately leaves it at casually strolling around the vaguely measured disco dance floor on the horizon.
Then step directly on it Chvrches on the B-side of the vinyl single, where a Gibbard correctly analyzed remix (“We have been good friends with Chvrches since touring together in 2019. They took our maudlin little dance track and turned it into a major key club banger.“) as a pumping version of An Arrow in the Wall which adds the Scottish band’s own, hymn-like, uplifting spirit of optimism as a signature for a melancholic euphoria, while the small vocal embellishments by Lauren Mayberry alone are simply great as a detail and the treatment as a whole offers an absolutely harmonious symbiosis between the two bands. The qualitative soaring of Death Cab since the Georgia EP anyway it goes on.
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