Interview with Nick Harmer of Death Cab for Cutie
By Matt Aucoin

It's always reassuring to find someone completely immersed in the modern rock scene that seems completely uncorrupted by all the excess and cynicism of the pop world.  I felt that vibe strongly from Nick Harmer, bassist for Death Cab for Cutie, which whom I had the chance to speak with backstage before the band's show at Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel.

What has surprised you about the reaction to Plans?
I don't know, I'm actually really surprised, I guess, live, how many of the sort of slower songs on the record really work, you know, people are really into them.  "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" works really well, "What Sarah Said," and "Brothers on a Hotel Bed," we play those pretty much every night and they've been going over really well. I mean, I kind of hoped that they would, but you never really know if people will kind of talk and chat over them about whatever.  It seems like people are paying attention and really getting into them. I guess that's sort of surprising…it was kind of a wish, a hope.

What are some differences between this year's tour and last year's tour for Transatlanticism? The band is definitely more of a name now.
I guess, I mean, in some ways, just only slightly different, you know – we've got a few more crew guys out with us; we're playing, in some cities, playing a little bit bigger rooms than we were.  But we played here last time, so clearly we haven't started playing stadiums, superdomes.

I can't really picture Death Cab in those.
I don't think we'll ever be that bad.

Upon signing with Atlantic, was there ever any pressure to commercialize your sound?
Not really.  I think that we were very careful going into the whole process - and we'd worked for so long and so hard to get basically enough momentum (up) that we had some legitimate things to barter with and to negotiate with so we could get a very arts-friendly and creative, very creatively fulfilling contract.  I don't think that we would have switched to Atlantic at all had there been any chance of there being any compromise to our artistic integrity. So, I think that so far there hasn't been any pressure - we made Plans, that's arguably not a very commercial-sounding record.

It's a very Death Cab-sounding record.
It's very Death Cab sounding! I'm really happy that the label has been supportive of that, and they believe in it, and we're out here touring on it and we will be touring on it around the world for the next year or so.  I'm happy; I haven't felt any weird pressure at all.

Transatlanticism and Plans feel almost like companion pieces, related stylistically, but you're a constantly evolving band. Any idea what the next step is going to be?
I think we're gonna have a departure from where we're at right now. We've talked about the next record a lot, and we've started to form some ideas about kind of what we want to do exactly. But ultimately, a lot of that will be up to Ben and where his muse takes him.  Maybe our next record will be a big rock record.  I don't think that it'll be too far in the direction that Plans was in, because I feel like we sort of started to explore some of that texture from Transatlanticism, so I feel like it'll be a lot more open than that, but I don't know whether it's gonna be 17 songs that last 30 minutes or if it'll be six songs that last 74 minutes. Who knows yet?

Death Cab has a very unique sound that has found the perfect niche in the modern indie-rock community. Do you think a band with your sound could have flourished ten or fifteen years ago?
Not necessarily ten or fifteen years ago, because ten or fifteen years ago there was already a whole crop of really good bands doing stuff - like alternative bands - and I think that that was a really good movement in the moment that was happening. And then it kind of went away, and I think up until now the time hasn't been right for it. I mean, six years ago, seven years ago, radio sucked, MTV - the only rock stuff that they were really playing was the really big corporate rock; nobody was really taking any chances or any risks. I feel like now, at least the media - magazines, television, film, everything - is really starting to take a little bit more chances with stuff that maybe isn't necessarily a proven thing. And I think they're finding that things are starting to catch on, work out - certainly a lot of bands like us, and Spoon, and the Shins, and Bright Eyes, and Interpol, and those types of bands are all kind of coming up now and our profiles have all been rising similarly.  I think that you can only really flourish in the time that's right, and it feels like the time is right right now. I don't think we really could have attained this level of success six or seven years ago, certainly not. We were trying back then! (laughs) No one was paying attention.

How do you write your songs?
It's pretty pre-set.  Ben writes a lot by himself in the in-between things, the off-season as we call it.  He puts together just a lot of demos and then he'll bring in a stack of stuff, some songs completed, some songs not completed, some just fragments, and we start culling through it as a band, and looking at things, and listening to things, and kind of figuring out just talking about stuff; like, what do we get excited about? What sounded great? And then from there, we sort of thin the pack out and then from there we work on them as we arrange them as a band and talk about them as we're playing them; and as we feel it out, from that discussion, we kind of whittle down into the body of the songs that we're gonna at least record for the record.  And even then, we go into the studio with more songs than will ultimately end up on the record, given a few more fall by the wayside. It's sort of like distilling, I guess, more than anything.

How'd you find your drummer, Jason McGerr (who joined the band with Transatlanticism)?
Jason's been a friend of ours for a long, long time.  Jason and I were actually in a band together before Death Cab. We were a three-piece prog band - we were called Eureka Farm - we actually recorded a record for Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam, the guitar player, he had a label for a while called Loose Groove. We recorded a record for that called Analog.  I left Eureka Farm and joined Death Cab, and then he stayed on and Eureka Farm made another record. They kept doing stuff and we went through our little drummer cycle and then it came to be that we needed a drummer and he didn't work with Eureka Farm anymore, and he was interested.  Like I said, we've been friends forever and I've always loved playing music with Jason, he's such a great drummer. It just made real sense to add him to the mix.

What's your favorite part of being on the road?
I think that now what's favorite about being on the road is just the people, we always meet so many interesting and great people and now we've got a lot of friends all over the place - it's just nice to see them.  We have pockets everywhere of people we've forged great relationships with, and it's kind of like little family reunions all along the way, with fans and people you meet at shows, and people working the shows, and journalists, and then your friends too. That's what keeps me coming back.

I know plenty of hardcore Death Cab fans who feel like their favorite unknown band is becoming popular, and it kind of hurts. Do you sympathize with this at all?
I know how that feels, yeah. I was that kid who loved Nirvana secretly for so many years, and then Nevermind came out and everybody loved 'em and I felt all betrayed by that - sort of, but on the other side of it, part of you was happy that the world was actually listening to good music, finally.  You can't have it both ways.  You can't ride around in your car with your friends and complain about how all the music on the radio sucks, and all the music on MTV sucks, and if they would only play all this good music, the world would be a better place. And then when they do, you get mad, like "Oh, now the world sucks because my favorite band's being played everywhere." It's like, well, what would you rather have, a world full of Creed, or a world full of, you know, the Shins and Death Cab?  I don't know, it's your choice.

What do you think of this sort of ambiguous "emo" label that's sometimes slapped on you guys?
You know, labels are labels. That's up to the journalists and the people who are writing, I think that if the journalist is gonna rely on some kind of buzzword to get their point across, then I call that lazy journalism. Do yourself a favor and find a new way to describe something, coin a new word, coin a new phrase or something, make it your own. Don't just follow what the other people are saying. I don't even really know - no one really knows what emo means, it's just, what, short for emotional? Isn't all music emotional?  Play me a song that doesn't have an emotional core to it, and that'll be a really sad and crappy song, I think.

When did you decide you were going to dedicate your life to music?
It's still a process of deciding that in some ways, it kind of creeps up on you. I've heard it said before, and I used to think it was really cheesy, but I kind of believe it now, the longer we do this: it's not so much that I chose music but music chose me, in some weird way. You kind of feel lucky, and you feel like things have worked out in a certain way, and you don't know really how you got here, and you don't know really how long it's gonna last, and you just make the best and the most of it while you're in the middle of it.  I knew that music was important to me when I was a little, little kid; I liked banging on a piano, I was in the school band, singing in the chorus, and that kind of stuff... I was always doing music, playing in bands, making music with friends, but I never thought I could actually make a living doing it, that it would be like a career option.  It was kind of a fun hobby - it still feels that way, in every sense of the word.

It's sort of working out.
I guess so, yeah.