1) No Room in Frame; 2) Black Sun; 3) The Ghosts of Beverly Drive; 4) Little Wanderer; 5) You’ve Haunted Me All My Life; 6) Hold No Guns; 7) Everything’s a Ceiling; 8) Good Help (Is So Hard to Find); 9) El Dorado; 10) Ingénue; 11) Binary Sea
Such a generic 2010s rock album this could have come from anyone, and it coming from a band going through various internal crises isn't making things better.
Kintsugi is a technique where broken pottery is glued back together with gold lacquer, to highlight the damage as a part of the item’s history rather than hide it. The broken pottery in this case was Death Cab for Cutie themselves, as Chris Walla announced halfway through the recording sessions that he intended to leave once the album was finished. Ben Gibbard wasn’t in the best shape either, with a high-profile divorce behind him and still reeling from the changes brought by it. And the gold lacquer? A high-profile outside producer for the first time in the band’s history with the radio-friendly Rich Costey, a direction leaning heavier on synthesized elements and Gibbard’s continued, intentional move away from his previous lyrical and music songwriting habits. Kintsugi, the album, is pretty on the nose about being directly driven by change and piecing together a new path; that lack of subtlety characterises the album fairly well too.
It’s not a complete skin-shedding moment for the band. Codes and Keys already flirted with increased programming and synthesizer elements, as well as a less verbose way of writing for Gibbard, and Kintsugi is a direct successor in both regards. Codes and Keys had its flaws though, and Kintsugi finds the band doubling down on them. The sound is sterile to the point of dulling down the emotional impact, the electronic ideas feel like they’re used simply because it’s 2015 and that’s just what rock bands do now, and Gibbard’s once-evocative storytelling is now so toned down that it’s at best indifferent and at worst so awkward it’s impossible to ignore. “Little Wanderer” is hands down the worst set of lyrics Gibbard has released on record, with verbal snapshots about kissing by the baggage claim so mundane that it actively brings down the song. At no point does Kintsugi sound like it could throw a curve ball or excite with something unheard; it’s the kind of adult, middle-of-the-road album you dread for any aging band to release.
To be fair, Kintsugi isn’t devoid of good ideas but the album is bent on trying to obscure them. “Little Wanderer” for example is so clunky lyrically that it’s hard to enjoy the genuinely lovely gentle drive it has going on musically, sounding effortless and light despite all the studio coating over it. Elsewhere it’s the production keeping things down, like with the slowly building introduction “No Room in Frame” or the new-wavey pop grab “Good Help (Is So Hard to Find)”, both of which have good ideas but sound breathless and about as intricate as a plain white wall. Kintsugi’s studio wizardry is a whole universe away from e.g. Plans’ lush, rich textures: here there’s no details, just a steady lifeless texture that invokes the grayscale colour scheme of the cover. Costey’s more mainstream-oriented production approach frequently misjudges where the band’s strengths lie and as a result so much of Kintsugi sounds like it could come from any band in contemporary radio, and it’s not a choice that works for Death Cab. Whenever the album slows the pace down, as Death Cab albums frequently do, its cracks really start to show. “You’ve Haunted Me All My Life”, “Hold No Guns”, “Binary Sea” et al are reheated leftover takes on the band’s former tearjerker moments, only now with less engaging melodies and worse lyrics. The shallow and treacly “Hold No Guns” is a particularly bad offender in this regard: it’s hard to put into words how far away it is from e.g. “I Will Follow You into the Dark” even though they’re both stripped down guitar numbers from the same songwriter.
There’s some silver linings. “Black Sun” and “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive” are the two big keepers of the album and they’re the closest it has to this set’s Death Cab classics, even if the album’s general issues still hover over them. "Black Sun” in particular has the kind of dark restlessness the band has always been good at conjuring, this time in the form of a steadily pulsating slow-burner teetering on the edge of breaking down, and just about goes through with it with its guitar solo which has more edge to it than anything else on the album. “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive” is the closest the album has to a rocker and it injects the otherwise softly paced collection with some urgency and muscle. Some of the less outright exciting cuts have their moments too, with "Everything’s a Ceiling” and “Good Help” serving basic melodic hooks good enough to find enjoyment out of them. It’s a far cry from the usual compliment you’d give to Death Cab deep cuts, but I can’t deny not enjoying them when they’re on, even if they’re not the sharpest of tracks. “Everything’s a Ceiling” in particular is the one song on the album where the slick, synthy sound comes across like it has some purpose and intent behind it, its atmospheric textures lifting it up.
It’s clear though that the band weren’t focused enough with Kintsugi to pull off anything more. Walla was suffering from demotivation in the first place and his departure announcement likely caused a wave of the same to go through the rest of the band. Gibbard has since mentioned that he tried to avoid bringing too much of his own life or specific details into the lyrics in fear of becoming under scrutiny in the Hollywood-centric life he had become immersed it around the time, which lead to his writing turning so generic it’s become blase. Kintsugi does what it can to turn the work of a broken band coasting along into something you could call an unified statement, but it goes too far with the polish. I don’t want to call Kintsugi bad but it’s certainly disappointing, taking the most effort to find the few reasons to ever go back to it. Worse, it sounds like it could have come from anyone, with Death Cab losing their own identity within the processed, sterile sound.
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