The AU Review was recently given the opportunity to speak with the lovely Nick Harmer, bass player for Death Cab For Cutie. After I finished gushing about how excited and nervous I was to speak with him, Nick took the time to answer some questions about their new album Codes And Keys, the band’s new found happiness, and ‘selling out’ for Twilight…
Amelia: Codes and Keys is now your seventh album, did you ever think when you first began that your career would span this far?
Nick: No. Not even once. I still can’t believe it! So I feel really lucky; I’m thanking all my lucky stars.
You released the EP The Open Door in 2009 but that was mostly the tracks left off Narrow Stairs as I understand it, is that correct?
That’s correct.
Sure, so just from listening to that, I thought that maybe the new album would be a shift back towards some of your earlier stuff such as Transatlanticism, because of the acoustic influence. However, I had a listen yesterday and it’s the complete opposite, it’s actually quite experimental. What influenced this change in direction?
A lot of things have influenced that. I think every album we make is a bit of a reaction to how we recorded and how we made the one previous. We recorded Narrow Stairs in a studio, pretty much one location, 24 tracks of analogue tape and really tried to do minimal overdubs and go for a very live performance of almost every song. I guess that’s how a lot of classic albums in the past have recorded. We really wanted to fall into that kind of experience and challenge ourselves to perform a song from start to finish and have it sound perfect, if that’s even possible. And then, this time Chris [Walla] really wanted to record into a computer and use the logic program and by the nature of just that choice alone it allowed us to sort of try anything that would pop into our mind. I mean, the sky’s the limit when you’re working with a computer. That allowed us to sort of do whatever; no matter how far fetched it may have seemed we’d give it a try because we had the space and time to do that. We didn’t have to worry about it eating into other tracks or other things that we absolutely needed to have happen. It’s kind of a balancing act when you only have 24 tracks to record on versus an infinity of tracks. What do you cut? I think that certainly lead to us having more fun and trying some new things in the studio.
The new single that you’ve released is “You Are A Tourist” and the film clip was filmed in one take with no editing. Whose idea was this and was it to complement this change in direction and the influence of computers?
It definitely utilises the sort of technology that’s available to us now but it certainly wasn’t meant to be a companion. I mean, we weren’t attempting to make a video in the same way we made the album. I think we just really liked the idea. Our friend and long time collaborator Aaron Stewart came up with the idea and brought it to us. We’ve all been fans of one take videos and you’ve seen them, people have been making them for a while. Even just recently some of the more popular OK Go videos that were these crazy things that worked out. But always those videos were shot multiple times before they got the one almost perfect take and then they were done with it.
Such as the OK Go clip for “Here It Goes Again” with the treadmills that was shot multiple times before getting the one take.
Exactly, so we just thought though why don’t we just make one and just go for it, see what happens? If it works that’s great and if we mess up in the middle then that will be part of the video too! We just wanted to stand by the live experience for whatever that brought to us and it made it very exciting. I think we reacted more to that feeling of ‘this is happening in real time’ and were very excited because of that more than anything to do with the computers and technology around it.
You’ve said in an interview recently that Codes and Keys has fewer guitars than your previous albums. So, as a bass player, are you finding your role is less prominent, or are you merely experimenting with guitars in different ways?
I think we’re trying to experiment guitars with different ways. But I mean, there are still bass lines in every song except for “Unobstructed Views” that has no bass guitar in it and “Codes and Keys” that has a synth bass but no bass guitar, but every other song has bass guitar on it. It’s very subtle in “St Peter’s Cathedral” as well but that was fun. I’m not protective of my role in the sense that I’m like ‘every song has to have a rad bass line or it’s not finished!’ I think for me it was like ‘does this song need a bass line? Cool. If it does, I’ll be happy to play one and if not we’ll figure out some other way of expressing it that makes sense.’
That’s what I’ve always really liked out the band and how we work, nobody’s really precious about their main instruments in those ways. We really want to do the song justice; we really want to make the song sound as exciting and as great as it can be on its own. We’re not trying to force it into a mould that means ‘well we have to have two electric guitars, a bass guitar and drums on this track. It has to be that!’ If you go back to the beginning of our recording or our first album you can see evidence of that moving forward. But I mean, take a song like “I Will Follow You Into The Dark”; when the rest of the band heard that song it was like ‘there’s no way we’re playing on this, it just needs to be the voice and the acoustic guitar, we love it!'
Do you have a favourite song off the new album?
I think I’m really liking “Doors Unlocked and Open” right now. We’re playing a whole handful of songs, we’re doing a promotional tour right now, headed towards a big festival in the states called Sasquatch on May 28. So as we’re trying new material live and kind of getting used to how it fits in with the old material I’ve really like “Doors Unlocked and Open”. It’s a really fun song to play, I like the bass line a lot, it just feels really good. It has a nice momentum and propulsion that I think is really satisfying. I really like the chorus a lot, it just gets caught in my head. It’s embarrassing to be walking around and humming your own song but it happens sometimes but that’s just a credit to Ben [Gibbard] as a songwriter and the melodies that he writes with his voice because they get into my head and I’m in the band.
You’ve announced shows in the States and in Europe until August. Are you going to be touring Australia anytime soon?
Oh yes, we love Australia, it’s one of our favourite countries in the world hands down. I can’t tell you about the details yet because we’re still working them all out but I know we’re talking about Australia so stay tuned.
It’s been a massive few years for the band personally. Aside from the music, you and Ben got married. Was this part of the reason for the break between albums or was this a natural process?
Just kind of a natural process. I think if anything the sort of happiness that came into our personal lives, finally, has really made this album more emotionally balanced overall sort of thematically as well as the textures. Narrow Stairs is a pretty dark album, we were all in some ways or others going through some dark periods in our lives and I think that record sort of reflects a lot of that uncertainty and that lack of balance in our lives. I think this record, Codes and Keys, captures or is an extension of a lot of the balance and happiness we’re feeling outside of the band. Our marriages are a part of that but we also have brothers and sisters outside of them that are doing well and all of that starts to feed the expression of your creativity.
In Australia you have copped a lot of flack from fans for contributing the song “Meet Me On the Equinox” to the film New Moon. What was your reaction to this, did you expect it?
I suppose, but at the same time it doesn’t really bother us, it’s just another way to share music with people. We’re proud of that song, we love it. That song came from the same batch of demos that are all the songs on Codes and Keys. If “Meet Me On the Equinox” didn't find a home on the Twilight soundtrack it would probably be on Codes and Keys. We’re still playing it live, it’s not like the movie hired us to write a specific song and we’re sort of hanging our heads in shame about this moment. You would be sort of foolish to not allow something like the Twilight franchise that is global juggernaut to use some of your music and share that with people around the world. Are they movies for me? No not really. I’m not that big a fan of them, or a fan of them at all [laughs]. But the soundtracks are all awesome and when it came to us we were like ‘who else is doing it?’ There’s a pretty awesome list of other artists on the soundtrack we were on. I remember we all looked and were like ‘well if it’s good enough for Thom Yorke it’s good enough for us!’ [Laughs]. We love Radiohead and I’m not going to stop liking Radiohead because Thom Yorke decided to give a song to these movies. I think it’s easier if you’re not a musician and you’re on the outside looking in going ‘why would you do that! It doesn't make any sense to me!’ If you’re in a band and you’re scratching your head everyday to try and figure out how to share your music because video stations don’t play videos anymore, at least in the States, and radio stations are really the only place where you can sometimes hear new music. After that it’s the wild wild west known as the internet and how do you ever turn anybodies head when there’s so many places to find out about music? Where do people find out about music? How do you share it? It’s television, it’s movies, it’s radio; you do everything available to you because you love playing music and you want people to hear your music. There are lots of things we will never do or never licence our songs for. We’re not going to sell our song to a tobacco company to sell cigarettes, but vampires? That’s fine [laughs].
You guys have been used in popular culture a lot. You’ve been in television shows such as The O.C, Gossip Girl and 90210. I really didn’t understand the whole backlash. I always said ‘really? They’ve already been on some major television shows and it’s all this criticism now?’ Like you’ve said, it’s just another way of getting your music out there and getting it to a different audience.
Yeah well the same people who were upset about that were probably upset that we were on The O.C. I mean, we don’t have a lot of time to think about it. We’re like, we want to make music, we want to tour, we want to share music so as long as the other bands around us are doing the same thing, and we have respect for them, we feel like we’re in good company and that’s what’s important.
Well that’s how I discovered you guys, in 2003 when I was watching The O.C and now I’m a lifelong fan so it is a worthwhile method.
Yeah I think that’s important, because to me, giving a band grief about putting their song on a soundtrack or a television show or whatever presupposes that there’s a right and a wrong way to find out about music and I don’t think there is. I think how ever you discover a band, if you love it, it doesn’t matter, you love the band! How ever you came across that, if it connects to you and it makes a different in your life then whether you saw someone wearing a t-shirt and you read a name on it and were like ‘that sounds like an interesting band name, I’m going to go figure that out!’ To me, that’s no less weird than watching them on a TV show or hearing their song on a soundtrack. It’s all about spreading the word of music.
I feel compelled to ask you, what has been your favourite album of your career so far?
It’s always the new album. That’s a very hard question to answer, it would be like asking a parent of seven children to pick their favourite child and I couldn’t do it. Every album is very important to me in many different ways. They all are a part of my life and sum up where I was with my band mates and friends in those points in my life. [They are] important and meaningful to me in so many different ways that I could never pick one over the other. I know that sounds like a bit of a cop out as an answer but it’s like ask a parent to pick their favourite kid and there’s your answer, you just can’t. They’re each unique in their own way.
Are you working on anything else at the moment? You used to play for the band Juno but are you just focused on Death Cab for the moment?
We’re always playing music. Music is a part of our life in this band and outside of this band. I’m not working on anything significant right now but there are lots of irons in the fire and lots of ideas. If there’s one thing I love about our band, it’s that when we spend time on the road, making albums and doing Death Cab For Cutie stuff, it’s our sole focus. Then we allow ourselves to take breaks from that and go off and explore other territories. It keeps us really inspired and creatively fulfilled so I think that has been the secret to our longevity for sure.
