Death Cab for Cutie have announced a new album, I Built You a Tower, and shared its lead single, ‘Riptides’. The follow-up to 2022’s Asphalt Meadows is set to land on June 5 via ANTI- Records. Check out director Jason Lester‘s video for the driving, jittery new single below, and scroll down for the album cover and tracklist.
According to Ben Gibbard, ‘Riptides’ “is about the challenge of dealing with personal struggles as the world around us experiences tragedy and loss on an unfathomable scale. And how when these two elements intertwine themselves in our psyches, it feels utterly paralyzing.”
The new LP was produced and engineered by John Congleton from three weeks’ worth of sessions split between Animal Rites in Los Angeles and the band members’ homes in Seattle, Portland, Bellingham, and Los Angeles. “The anniversary tours exorcised any nostalgia in our systems,” guitarist and keyboardist Dave Depper commented. “We felt part of this powerful force greater than all of us and went into the studio with a sense of, how can we capture that feeling and put it into something new?”
Bassist Nick Harmer added: “The whole experience of this record got us back to the earliest versions of this band: If the musicians in the room like what we’re working on, that’s enough. We reconnected with the confidence that comes with that.”
“There’s this need to find a place in ourselves to put loss and grief,” Ben Gibbard explained, referring to the titular tower. “A place that can hold it so we can move on with our lives. But there are these moments where the trauma breaks out of that shell we created for it.”
Death Cab are also going on tour in support of their new album, beginning in Minneapolis on July 10 and wrapping up in Paso Robles on August 7.
I Built You a Tower Cover Artwork:
I Built You a Tower Tracklist:
1. Full of Stars
2. Punching The Flowers
3. Pep Talk
4. I Built You A Tower (a)
5. Envy The Birds
6. Stone Over Water
7. How Heavenly a State
8. Trap Door
9. Riptides
10. The Flavor of Metal
11. I Built You A Tower (b)
