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Everybody Has A Language Or Code That They Use With Their Wife Or Their Girlfriend Or Boyfriend Or What Have You. It’s A Language Aside From The Language They Have With Strangers. I’ve Always Been Maybe An Abuser Of Alliteration, But I’ve Always Loved It And I Like How Those Words Sound Together.

-Ben Gibbard

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Everybody Has A Language

Ben Gibbard

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Everybody Has A Language Or Code That They Use With Their Wife Or Their Girlfriend Or Boyfriend Or What Have You. It’s A Language Aside From The Language They Have With Strangers. I’ve Always Been Maybe An Abuser Of Alliteration, But I’ve Always Loved It And I Like How Those Words Sound Together.

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When I Listen To Airplanes Record, It Takes Me Back. I Remember A Lot Of My Thought Processes When I Was 20 Or 21, Writing Those Songs And Recording That Record. I Wonder What I Was Thinking When I Was Trying To Say A Particular Thing. I Hear Some Of The Weird Little Nuances In The Recording; I Can Hear What The Room Sounded Like. I Remember What It Smelled Like. I Can Remember Sitting Up In Guitarist Chris Walla's Bedroom And For The First Time In My Life Having This Realization Like, "maybe I Can Do This. Maybe I Can Make Music That In Some Capacity People Will Enjoy And Come See Me Play."

We Never Sit Down Before We Start Making A Record And Talk About This New Sonic Palette That We Are Going To Try To Explore. We Always Let The Record Kind Of Reveal Itself To Us Over Time.

I Just Rediscovered My Guitar.

Nada Surf And Harvey Danger Are Good Bands. I Think They've Just Stayed True To Why They Play Music In The First Place, It's Just Because They Love Doing It And They Love Each Other And That's The Impetus For Doing It, Not Trying To Keep Singles On The Radio And On Mtv.

I Kind Of Dropped A Lot Of Bad Habits About Three Years Ago And Became Kind Of Accidentally Straight-edge. I Don't Have Xs On My Hands, But I Guess If I Wanted To Go Back To Calling Myself Straight-edge, I Could. Around That Same Time I Started Running. I Never Saw Myself As The Kind Of Person Who Would Become A Runner. It Seemed Unfathomable To Me That I Would Ever Run Three Miles, Let Alone 26.2.

More Times Than Not, It's A Failed Endeavor. You Will Fail More Times Than You Succeed. But I Think You Need Those Failed Endeavors.

Bands Who Are In Their Early 20s Today, They Are Living In Their Own Time And They Have A Series Of Parameters They Have To Work Around. Ten Years Ago, Our Reality Was Spending A Lot More Time In Obscurity Before Anyone Really Knew Who We Were. I Don't Feel Like I Have Any Real Advice To Give Anybody Who Is Starting A Band Today. As Mike Watt Said, "you Know, Not Everyone Has The Ability To Be Born At The Same Time." We Wanted To Be Like R.e.m., But The Reality Is That 15 Years After R.e.m. Was Putting Out Those Records, The Playing Field Had Changed Drastically As Well.

I Feel That We Are Currently Living In A World That Is Similar To Late '50s, Early '60s Kind Of World.

The Photo Album Is The Weakest Record. For The First Time In Our Careers, We Found Ourselves With An Economic Incentive To Be On The Road And To Be Making Albums. We Had Cut Ourselves Free From The Security Of Day-job Life. The Goals Became Primarily Financial, At Least For A While. That Was The Roughest Time We Had Ever Had As A Band, Because That Was The First Moment We Realized That This Was For Real. We Were Not Goofing Around Anymore. We All Threw Everything We Had Into This In A Way Where We All Found Ourselves Really Far From Home, And We Were Stuck With Each Other.

I Was Literally Just Going And Applying For Jobs, And I Couldn't Get A Job, And I Was Getting More And More Broke, And You Find Yourself Groveling For Jobs You Don't Even Want.

Finding Yourself

Everybody Has A Language Or Code That They Use With Their Wife Or Their Girlfriend Or Boyfriend Or What Have You. It’s A Language Aside From The Language They Have With Strangers. I’ve Always Been Maybe An Abuser Of Alliteration, But I’ve Always Loved It And I Like How Those Words Sound Together.

Everybody Has A Language Or Code That They Use With Their Wife Or Their Girlfriend Or Boyfriend Or What Have You. It's A Language Aside From The Language They Have With Strangers.

You Can't Please Everybody All The Time, But I Think For The Most Part We Tend To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Self-reference To Kind Of Make Sure We Continue To Push Things Forward.

If You Tell Certain People That You Like Kerouac, They Assume That's All You Read, Like You Don't Know Anything Else About Literature. I Recognize All The Things That People Dislike About The Way He Writes - His Tone And The Sentimentality Of It All. But Those Books Were There For Me At A Very Important Point In My Life.

As A Songwriter, I'm Not Necessarily Writing About Myself Or My Life.

To Set The Record Straight For The God Knows Millionth Time, We Certainly Didnt Sign To Atlantic Just For The Money.

The Songwriting Of Hall & Oates Is Deceptively Complex. There Are A Number Of Key Changes That Pass You By As You're Listening To The Song Because They're So Seamless And Clever.

I Like Writing On Piano And A Computer, And A Lot Of 'plans' Came Out Of Samples And Vocal Lines.

I've Always Had A Soft Spot For Phil Collins. He's A Great Vocalist.

I Take Things A Little Bit More Critically Now, Like, "what Did I Think I Was Saying In That Song? What Is This Song About?" I Thought The Lyrics Were Incredibly Descriptive, And Now They Sound Really Cryptic And Weird. I'd Like To Also Think That When I Listen To Songs From Something About Airplanes That I'm Proud Of My Development As A Writer. I Don't Think I Was Doing Anything Poorly At That Time, But I Can Certainly See How My Writing Has Changed.

I Feel Like There's A Lot Of Beauty In The Darkness Of 'narrow Stairs,' But That's Not Really A Place I'm Ready To Go To For A While. I'm Interested In Taking A Different Approach And Having The Next Record Be Different In Tone - I'm Just Not Interested In Making Another Dark, Dark Album.

I'm A War Of Head Versus Heart, It's Always This Way. My Head Is Weak, My Heart Always Speaks, Before I Know What It Will Say.

I'm Not Like A 90-mph Fastball Kind Of Guy, But I Can Hit 70 On Radar Gun.

Death Cab Is A Militantly Analog Band. We'll Continue Moving Forward With Our Sound, But There Will Be No Crossover.

You Look Back At A Time You Idealize Now And You Only Remember The Good Stuff. You Tell The Stories About The Hard Stuff And Just Laugh About It Now. You Don't Remember How Difficult It Was To Be Stranded In Austin After Driving 52 Hours From Seattle In A Rainstorm And Having Nowhere To Stay For Five Hours. You Remember That Stuff And Laugh About It Now. You Don't Feel It The Way You Did Back Then When You Were So Scared And Nervous And Tired And Hungry. We Always Idealize The Past Because We Don't Feel The Painful Stuff The Way We Used To.

I Have Always Been Very Open And Earnest About Some Things In My Life, Some Things That Are Not Directly In My Life, But They're Twirling Around Me At The Time.

I Don't Spend My Time Perusing Message Boards To Find Out What People Think About Me Or If People Think My Songs Are Good Or If People Love That Lyric Or This Or That. I Just Want To Be Happy With It Myself - And If Other People Like It, That's Great.

A Lot Of The Material Is About The Inevitable Disappointment People Feel As They Move Through Life, And Things Don't Feel The Way They Expect. No Experience Will Ever Match Up To The Idealized Version In Your Mind.

There Were A Lot Of Fences And Walls Existing In My Life, Literally And Figuratively, And That Was Really Not Indicative Of The Kind Of Person That I'd Always Been. So, When I Moved Back To Seattle, The First Thing I Said Was, "i Will Never Live In Fear Again."

The Second 'postal Service' Album Is Threatening To Become The 'chinese Democracy' Of Indie Rock. It Will Come Out Eventually, Or Maybe It Won't.

I Want To Write Songs With Complete Sentences. I Almos Have This Obsession With Short-changing Words. I Would Never Be So Pretentious To Say That My Lyrics Are Poetry. ... Poems Are Poems. Song Lyrics Are For Songs.

Liking Interesting Things Doesn't Make You Interesting.

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And It Came To Me Then That Every Plan Is A Tiny Prayer To Father Time.

If There Is One Thing I Think I Have Accomplished, It's That I Always Thought Of Myself As A Very Literal Songwriter, And As I Look At Some Of Those Older Records, I Don't Hear It Now The Way I Did When I Was 20. I Think It Is Undeniable That The Songs Have Become More Instantaneously Descriptive And Literal. I'd Like The Songs To Be More Storytelling, But Also Have The Turns Of Phrase Within Them That Would Hopefully Distance My Writing From The Pack. I Feel Like On Those Older Records There Are A Lot Of Attempts At Clever Turns Of Phrase.

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I Can Remember How I Sang - A Little More Nasal-y Back Then. Listening To Those Old Recordings Is Like Seeing A Photograph Of Yourself From 10 Years Ago. You're Wearing What You Thought Looked Cool At The Time. You Had Your Hair Styled The Particular Way You Thought Looked Cool. It's An Accurate Depiction Of Who You Were And What You Looked And Sounded Like At That Point In Your Life. It Doesn't Necessarily Mean That It Aged In A Way That It Feels As Cool Or Sounds As Good To You, Or Says What You Thought It Said, 10 Years Later. That's Just The Nature Of Growing Older.

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The Late '90s Were A Really Bad Time For People Trying To Be Rock Stars, You Know What I Mean? It Seemed Like Everyone Was A One-hit Wonder On The Radio. We Had Friends Who Had A Hit Single On The Radio And Sold 500,000 Records, And Then They Couldn't Get Arrested A Year Later. I Had This Feeling At The Time That That Was Not Possible Anymore, So The Idea Of Becoming The Biggest Band In The Country—it Seemed Laughable. I Felt That Having Those Sort Of Ambitions Was Foolish, Because There Was No Way That Was Going To Be Possible. If You Saw It That Way, You Were Just Deluding Yourself.

Between Every Record, We All Split Off In Our Own World And We All End Up Listening To Usually Pretty Different Music On Our Own. We Come Together Not Really Knowing What The Other People Having Been Really Listening To And What's Been Influencing Them.

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You Spend Hours Alone, Only With Your Thoughts, And You Torture Yourself. It's A Tendency Of Many Writers To Temper The Self-destructive Act Of Writing With Other Self-destructive Acts. I Certainly Was One Of Those People For A Long Time.

At This Point In My Life, I Find Myself Obsessed With Alternate Paths I Could've Taken. I Don't Think About This With A Sense Of Regret, But With A Sense Of Wonder.

Our Band Is Very Polarizing. There Are People Who Absolutely Can't Stand Us, And People Who Absolutely Can't Live Without Us. I'd Rather Spark Those Kind Of Polar-opposite Feelings Than Have People Be Indifferent.

There Were Two Recording Studios In Bellingham. One Was Really Expensive, A "nice Studio." We Were At The Point Where We Were Young And Irreverent. We Would Scoff At The Idea Of A Nice Studio. "why Would You Want To Go To A Nice Studio? Oh Wow, They Have Really Expensive Gear. Ooh, That's Really Fancy. Well We've Got An Eight-track. We've Got It Going On Here." Now That We Have The Resources, We're Like, "oh Wow, A Nice Studio Is Pretty Nice! They Do Have Nice Outboards Here. It's Actually A Pretty Good Place." It's Funny How Much Changes So Quickly.

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