And those who misspell "Litsa" are doomed unto eternity:

This kid will incur permanent acid reflux if he reads The Believer interview with JR. If I'm going to be branded a heretic, I'm honored that it's alongside Mr. Gibbard:

Souls of Rock: Death Cab for Cutie - I Will Follow You Into the Dark

As good of a way as any to start the new year:

CNN.com - Have scientists found Mozart's skull? - Jan 3, 2006

Though "Grab Her Twat" and "Dad's Anal Adventure" would have been worse:

I've noted before that, thanks to my Black Table pieces, my name has been inadvertantly (and often humorously) linked to a number of porn sites. However, in light of today's additions, Grab Her Boob and Mom's Anal Adventure, it's worth reiterating that, no, I don't write porn and if I choose to, I'll certainly come up w/ something more erotically charged and less hurl-inducing than playground-level groping and persons' moms taking it up the ass.

Two recent faves from McSweeney's not written by me or anyone I know:

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: I Don't Know What the Big Deal About Having a Baby Is.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Bruce Springsteen Songs, If the Title More Accurately Reflected the Subject Matter.

When words are both essential and meaningless:

From CNN.com:

Koinange: Hospital scene like 'hell on earth'

African nation of Malawi battered by AIDS, drought

By Jeff Koinange
CNN

Thursday, December 1, 2005; Posted: 3:46 p.m. EST (20:46 GMT)

Editor's note: In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences covering news.
Jeff Koinange, CNN Africa correspondent, in Malawi.

BLANTYRE, Malawi (CNN) -- Walking into the highly restricted tuberculosis ward of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Malawi's second city of Blantyre is a lesson in humility.

To enter, you need to fill out a lot of paperwork letting the hospital know that if anything happens to you, it is not liable. This takes a couple of hours.

Once you're cleared, you get a surgeon's mask and a guide and off you go.

Our team did this recently and entered a scene that's the closest thing we've seen to hell on earth.

In bed after bed, the dead and the dying lie side-by-side. Patients stricken by advanced tuberculosis brought on by AIDS cough uncontrollably while relatives try to comfort them.

More:

CNN.com - Koinange: Hospital scene like 'hell on earth' - Dec 1, 2005

"I spend all my energy staying upright..."--N.S.

My Paste review of Nada Surf's October Seattle show went up last week. I feel compelled to note that "emotard" was changed to "emogeek", "wang" became "dork" and "shake its ass" was altered to "do something besides nod approvingly". (I fucking loved the show. These terms aren't in reference to the band.) Anyhow:

Paste Magazine :: Review :: Nada Surf, Say Hi To Your Mom :: Neumo’s, Seattle 10/19/2005 (Page 1)

From the Times of London: "Man 'cured' of HIV agrees to undergo further clinical tests"

"Man 'cured' of HIV agrees to undergo further clinical tests"
By Sam Lister, Health Correspondent

A YOUNG British man thought to be the first person to have shaken off HIV, the virus that causes Aids, is to undergo further clinical tests in the hope of a breakthrough in treating the condition.

Andrew Stimpson, 25, said yesterday that he was willing to do all he could to help to tackle the condition, after it emerged that his body had apparently rid itself of the human immunodeficiency virus.

Mr Stimpson, a Scot living in London, was found to be HIV-positive in August 2002, but 14 months later a blood test suggested that he no longer carried the virus. A further three tests confirmed the finding.

Doctors believe that this first confirmed case of ?spontaneous clearance? of HIV could offer important insights into the behaviour of the virus, and possible means of defeating it. "

More:

Britain, UK news from The Times and The Sunday Times - Times Online:

Mauling + ice cream + sex = readin':

My short story, "When Bears Attack", is in Rivet #14, "The Union Issue". The story's print version features an awesome graphic from Christopher Hong and the correct line breaks, but if you're short five bucks, you can read it here:

Rivet Magazine: Discover. Inquire. Repeat.

What? Who?

I'm not sure how a feature on Seattle music can viably omit Barsuk and its roster--*bullshit has been called*--but this is a fun piece nonetheless, particularly the part about the (awesome) John Richards:

Seattle Weekly: Music: A Day in the Life

If you need a (temporary) distraction from bird flu news:

My Paste Death Cab cover story is archived online now:

Paste Magazine :: Feature :: Death Cab For Cutie :: The Hardest Working Band in Show BIz (Page 1)

And--bonus!--the print-only Donner Party sidebar. Because eating people is funny:

In the new documentary, "Drive Well, Sleep Carefully", director Justin Mitchell captures Death Cab for Cutie's 2004 tour, during which the band traversed the U.S. in a well-equipped bus. While their offstage antics seem largely comprised of storytelling and shooting hoops, who knows what could happen next time? As Death Cab gets ready to hit the road again in support of their new record, Plans, Paste asked the lads and some of their indie rock co-horts: If a Donner Party type situation arises, who will you eat and why?

I think I'd probably eat Jason. He's definitely the strongest out of the four of us. He has more muscle, and probably more protein, in his body than Chris certainly does, and definitely more than Nick because Jason's taller and bigger than Nick. I'd have to eat Jason.--Ben Gibbard

I don't think any of them would dispute that if both of our bands were lost together, although I would do everything in my power to return us all to safety, in the final analysis I would be picking my teeth with their shinbones when spring came. It's hard to say whom I would eat first, because each of them has a terrible ferocity when cornered. I might let them fight it out amongst themselves at first, and wait until they'd worn each other out. I think that Nick would make the best eating. --John Roderick, The Long Winters

I'd eat Jason because Jason's muscle to fat ratio is the best.--Chris Walla

I guess I have to agree that Jason would be the last one standing. If it were up to me to decide which band member to eat first, I would volunteer myself, so that the band might have a chance to live on. ---Josh Rosenfeld, Barsuk Records co-founder

Well, I've got a big appetite and Nick's got some good hearty muscle on his bone, so I would choose Nick. Although what if I needed him alive to be on my side? I might have Chris as an appetizer instead.--Jason McGerr

I would eat whoever died of natural causes first because I couldn't kill anyone to eat them. I'm pretty sure Ben would be one of the first to go and then we'd have to eat Ben. Ben would be pretty juicy. Surviving that long requires a certain level of dedication and patience and I think Ben would be like, "You know what? Screw this whole thing. We're already screwed." He wouldn't hang on unnecessarily. I think Chris would make a very lean meal, and that's always important, so if I were watching my figure, I'd go for a leg of Chris. If I were going for really tasty, I'd go for Ben. Jason would be good, too, but I don't think he would die early on. I think Jason would be the guy who would eat us all. He would be the last man standing. He's kind of the survivor that way.--Nick Harmer

Not Walla, definitely, because you wouldn't get very far eating him. I think it would be between Ben or Nick. I think Ben would have more of a chicken flavor, whereas if you were in the mood for something like lamb, something a little more rich, Nick would be your man. So, it depends on what sort of curry you wanted to serve, chicken or lamb.--Colin Meloy, The Decemberists

Great moments in bad editing:

Here's the letter I wrote to New York Magazine:

I've interviewed JT LeRoy twice, once for Bookslut and once for Poets and
Writers. Over the past two years, we've become good friends, exchanging
hundreds of emails, blowing several hours on the phone, and spending time in person. (Note: I attended the Deitch Gallery launch for "Harold's End" last November. Your photographer, Danielle Levitt, took some test Polaroids of me, a curly-haired woman in a pink boucle coat.)

The truth is far more banal than Stephen Beachy's turgid story alleges. JT writes his own work. On numerous occasions, he's called or emailed
throughout the day with sequential drafts of stories or articles on which
he's working. He has a predilection for animated e-cards, only burns soy
candles, and loves my mom's baklava. And I've met Emily: she and JT sound
nothing alike.

In order for JT to be a hoax, he would have had to fool Vanity Fair (the
U.S. and British versions), the New York Times, BlackBook, Interview, Paper, Index, I-D, Spin, 7 X 7, Viking Press, Bloomsbury Press, Last Gasp Books, Zoetrope, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Bono, Zadie Smith, Gus Van Sant, Madonna, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Arthur Bradford, Mary Karr, Carrie Fisher, Yoko Ono, Jerry Harrison and my mom and me, among others. (Perhaps you can fool Madonna, but you can't fool my mom.)

Also, he would have to had raise several thousand dollars over the years for Dr. Terrence Owens' McAuley Institute at St. Mary's Hospital, *spontaneously and for no apparent reason.* And anyone who knows JT well knows he could never pull off a hoax. He's erudite and silly and probably a genius, but I once spent five minutes on the phone with him while he looked for stamps. He could never perpetuate fraud--not only because he's moral--but because he's totally unorganized.

Sincerely,

Litsa Dremousis
Seattle,WA

Here's what New York Mag ran this week:

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymag/letters/14960/index1.html

The Real LeRoy
Over the past two years, I’ve become friends with JT [“Who is the Real JT
LeRoy?” by Stephen Beachy, October 17]. He has a predilection for animated e-cards, burns only soy candles, and loves baklava. To be a hoax, he would’ve had to fool Vanity Fair, the New York Times, BlackBook, Interview, Paper, Index, I-D, Spin, 7X7, Viking Press, Bloomsbury Press, Last Gasp, Zoetrope, Dave Eggers, Bono, Zadie Smith, Gus Van Sant, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Arthur Bradford, Mary Karr, Carrie Fisher, Jerry Harrison, Madonna, me, and my mom. And anyway, JT could never perpetuate fraud—he’s totally disorganized.
—Litsa Dremousis, Seattle, Wash.

A New York Mag fact-checker called three times over two weeks to verify everything, and I was told twice that my "letter [was] probably going to run". I never would have agreed to let them print it, though, if I'd known they were going to alter its tone. I know they can edit for clarity, but they changed the thing's intent. The edited version is poorly written and sounds like I'm taking a swipe at JT, which I'm not doing. Obviously.

Regardless, I hope everyone is done with this inane topic. I know I am.

I will be so fucking happy when the rest of the world catches up:

The Long Winters' "Ultimatum" is #8 in Seattle:

Seattle Weekly: Music: Countdown: Oct. 26-Nov. 1, 2005

Buy the disc and/or download the title song:

The Long Winters : ultimatum

Today, it does not suck to be a Democrat:

CNN.com - Democrats force Senate into unusual closed session - Nov 1, 2005

Apparently, Stephen Beachy has time on his hands:

I hate to respond to this because it's so absurd, but I've been asked about it more than once, so here goes:

In order for JT to be a hoax, he would have had to fool Vanity Fair (the U.S. and British versions), the New York Times, BlackBook, Interview, Paper, Index, I-D, Spin, 7 X 7, Viking Press, Bloomsbury Press, Last Gasp Books, Zoetrope, Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida, Bono, Zadie Smith, Madonna, Tom Waits, Lou Reed, Arthur Bradford, Mary Karr, Carrie Fisher, Yoko Ono, Jerry Harrison and, oh yeah, my mom and me, among others. (Maybe you can fool Madonna, but you can't fool my mom.)

Also, he would have to had raise several thousand dollars over the years for Dr. Terrence Owens' Mc Auley Institute at St. Mary's Hospital, *spontaneously and for no apparent reason.*

And anyone who knows JT well knows he could never pull off a hoax. He's erudite and silly and probably a genius, but I once spent five minutes on the phone with him while he looked for stamps. He could never perpetuate fraud--not only because he's totally moral--but because he's too unorganized:

Who is JT LeRoy? The True Identity of a Great Literary Hustler

A tiny green man gave me a blintz one time:

My friend's story, "The Day the Aliens Brought Pancakes", was selected as a "Notable Story of 2004" in the new "Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005". All hail, Mr. Spitznagel:

monkeybicycle.net

Yay, Jay Tay!

My friend, the finest writer and most sartorially adept individual to come out of West Virginia, has another essay in the New York Times:

By JT LeRoy
Published: September 25, 2005

"Cheese! It's hailing cheese!" We cover our heads. Our 8-year-old, Thor, cowers beneath us - his parents, Astor and Speedie, and me, a surrogate brother, sister, wannabe parent - as we form a shield between him and the miniature cubes pounding down on us. This is France, so it was only a matter of time till the cheese blasted us; we didn't expect it at the Tour de France, though.

We arrived two days before the tour's end. It was all anyone talked about as soon as we opened our mouths and revealed our furtive identities as Americans, noticeably scarce in Paris right then. A man in the lobby of our hotel, the Monna Lisa - situated two blocks from the Champs-Elysï¿1⁄2es, where the tour would wind up - informed me as I was struggling with a map that I was there for the tour: "Ah, you are here to see your Lance win!"

"Well, we came to go to Euro Disney."

His face crumpled, he folded his paper and, in an unyielding tone, rectified my faux pas: "You mean to say, 'Disneyland Paris!'"

By the threat in his tone, I instantly capitulated. "Yes, uh, Eur - Paris of Disney. What you said." After this happened a bazillion other times, I finally got the drift that the antipathy toward outfitting Disney with the "Euro" prefix could have something to do with its being the equivalent of "Dollar Disney." I started pronouncing it "Disneyland Paris" and received no more looks of vile disgust. Well, at least not for that.

More:
Uncle Walt, Parlez-Vous Fran?ais? - New York Times

We field a hell of a rugby team, too:

Among the Believers - New York Times

Nada Surfin':

I've been listening to the promo ceaselessly since I received it in June. If Nada Surf's "The Weight is a Gift" doesn't become one of your favorite discs of 2005, well, I don't want to know you:

The Weight is a Gift by Nada Surf - New York Fall Music Preview 2005

The best summation I've read so far:

From today's New York Times:

Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street - New York Times

Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street

By DAN BARRY
Published: September 8, 2005

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 7 - In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering "early bird" rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis.

The sight of corpses has become almost common on the mostly abandoned streets of New Orleans, as rescue and evacuation operations have taken priority over removing the dead.

Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005.

Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time.

Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City.

That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.

Welcome to New Orleans in the post-apocalypse, half baked and half deluged: pestilent, eerie, unnaturally quiet.

Scraggly residents emerge from waterlogged wood to say strange things, and then return into the rot. Cars drive the wrong way on the Interstate and no one cares. Fires burn, dogs scavenge, and old signs from les bons temps have been replaced with hand-scrawled threats that looters will be shot dead.

The incomprehensible has become so routine here that it tends to lull you into acceptance. On Sunday, for example, several soldiers on Jefferson Highway had guns aimed at the heads of several prostrate men suspected of breaking into an electronics store.

A car pulled right up to this tense scene and the driver leaned out his window to ask a soldier a question: "Hey, how do you get to the interstate?"

Maybe the slow acquiescence to the ghastly here - not in Baghdad, not in Rwanda, here - is rooted in the intensive news coverage of the hurricane's aftermath: floating bodies and obliterated towns equal old news. Maybe the concerns of the living far outweigh the dignity of a corpse on Union Street. Or maybe the nation is numb with post-traumatic shock.

Wandering New Orleans this week, away from news conferences and search-and-rescue squads, has granted haunting glimpses of the past, present and future, with the rare comfort found in, say, the white sheet that flaps, not in surrender but as a vow, at the corner of Poydras Street and St. Charles Avenue.

"We Shall Survive," it says, as though wishing past the battalions of bulldozers that will one day come to knock down water-corrupted neighborhoods and rearrange the Louisiana mud for the infrastructure of an altogether different New Orleans.

Here, then, the New Orleans of today, where open fire hydrants gush the last thing needed on these streets; where one of the many gag-inducing smells - that of rancid meat - is better than MapQuest in pinpointing the presence of a market; and where images of irony beg to be noticed.

The Mardi Gras beads imbedded in mud by a soldier's boot print. The "take-away" signs outside restaurants taken away. The corner kiosk shouting the Aug. 28 headline of New Orleans's Times-Picayune: "Katrina Takes Aim."

Rush hour in downtown now means pickups carrying gun-carrying men in sunglasses, S.U.V.'s loaded with out-of-town reporters hungry for action, and the occasional tank. About the only ones commuting by bus are dull-eyed suspects shuffling two-by-two from the bus-and-train terminal, which is now a makeshift jail.

Maybe some of them had helped to kick in the portal to the Williams Super Market in the once-desirable Garden District. And who could blame them if all they wanted was food in those first desperate days? The interlopers took the water, beer, cigarettes and snack food. They did not take the wine or the New Orleans postcards.

On the other side of downtown across Canal Street in the French Quarter, the most raucous and most unreal of American avenues is now little more than an empty alley with balconies.

The absence of sweetly blown jazz, of someone cooing "ma chère," of men sporting convention nametags and emitting forced guffaws - the absence of us - assaults the senses more than any smell.

Past the famous Cafe du Monde, where a slight breeze twirls the overhead fans for no one, past the statue of Joan of Arc gleaming gold, a man emerges from nothing on Royal Street. He is asked, "Where's St. Bernard Avenue?"

"Where's the ice?" he asks in return, eyes narrowed in menace. "Where's the ice? St. Bernard's is that way, but where's the ice?"

In Bywater and the surrounding neighborhoods, the severely damaged streets bear the names of saints who could not protect them. Whatever nature spared, human nature stepped up to provide a kind of democracy in destruction.

At the Whitney National Bank on St. Claude Avenue, diamond-like bits of glass spill from the crushed door, offering a view of the complementary coffee table. A large woman named Phoebe Au - "Pronounced 'Awe,' " she says - materializes to report that men had smashed it in with a truck. She fades into the neighborhood's broken brick, and a thin woman named Toni Miller materializes to correct the record.

"They used sledgehammers," she said.

Farther down St. Claude Avenue, where tanks rumble past a smoldering building, the roads are cluttered with vandalized city buses. The city parked them on the riverbank for the hurricane, after which some hoods took them for fare-free joy rides through lawless streets, and then discarded them.

On Clouet Street, where a days-old fire continues to burn where a warehouse once stood, a man on a bicycle wheels up through the smoke to introduce himself as Strangebone. The nights without power or water have been tough, especially since the police took away the gun he was carrying - "They beat me and threatened to kill me," he says - but there are benefits to this new world.

"You're able to see the stars," he says. "It's wonderful."

Today, law enforcement troops began lending muscle to Mayor C. Ray Nagin's vow to evacuate by force any residents too attached to their pieces of the toxic metropolis. They searched the streets for the likes of Strangebone, and that woman whose name sounds like Awe.

Meanwhile, back downtown, the shadows of another evening crept like spilled black water over someone's corpse.

The best part is that it's well-deserved:

Nothing Is Certain but Death and Taxis - New York Times

Nothing Is Certain but Death and Taxis

By KELEFA SANNEH
Published: August 28, 2005

BEN GIBBARD, the lead singer and main songwriter for Death Cab for Cutie, has had a wildly eventful few years. His band's sweet, melancholy songs have helped a generation of listeners rediscover the joys of heartfelt balladry. And along the way, Mr. Gibbard has gone from semi-obscure singer to unlikely heartthrob. Who could have predicted that someone like him would wind up dominating the gossip columns? And who could have foreseen the sold-out stadium concerts, the punch-up with a paparazzo, the fruitful marriage to Gwyneth Paltrow?

O.K., strike that last bit: I think I'm getting Mr. Gibbard mixed up with that guy from Coldplay. But it's a surprisingly easy mistake to make. Both of them know their way around grand, sighing love songs. And while Mr. Gibbard isn't quite a mainstream rock star yet, he's surprisingly close. The last Death Cab for Cutie album, "Transatlanticism" (Barsuk), has sold more than 300,000 copies since its release in 2003. And with an electronic side project called the Postal Service, Mr. Gibbard released another 2003 album, "Give Up" (Sub Pop); it was a surprise indie smash, selling more than 600,000 copies.

On Tuesday, Death Cab for Cutie is to release "Plans" (Atlantic), its first major-label album, which is all but assured to be its best-selling one so far. In an earlier era, indie-rock fans might have worried about the new record deal and the newfound popularity, but Death Cab's evolution into a pop-chart-ready band has been steady and relatively uncontroversial. Whereas older indie-rock groups sometimes struggled furiously against the current of listener demand, this one has found a graceful way to swim with it.

"Plans" also represents a challenge for the mainstream music industry. Modest Mouse proved that indie-rock bands (you don't necessarily outgrow the genre when you outgrow your record label) could earn a platinum plaque, and Bright Eyes proved that an indie-rock act could make its debut in the Top 10. Now the executives at Atlantic Records have a chance to raise the bar again, although no one knows how high. Could Death Cab be the first of these bands to break into the Top 5? The first to go double-platinum? The first to score a remix from Kanye West? (A Gibbard can dream, can't he?)

Ever since Death Cab's 1999 debut album, "Something About Airplanes," this Bellingham, Wash., band has been finding ways to record music that is pretty but not fussy. The members first perfected their approach on "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes" (Barsuk), an astonishing CD full of hard songs that sounded soft. Mr. Gibbard sang,
When your apologies fail to ring true
So slick with that sarcastic slew
Of phrases like, 'I thought you knew'
While keeping me in hot pursuit

but the words came out not as angry accusations but as one long, gentle sigh.

After "The Photo Album" (Barsuk), from 2001, the band outdid itself with "Transatlanticism," which showed off Mr. Gibbard's crystalline voice and also the crystalline production of the guitarist, Chris Walla. He stripped away almost all the noise and fuzz, letting listeners concentrate on intoxicating little details, like the owlish hoots hidden in the background of a song called "Lightness."

With "Translatlanticism," Mr. Gibbard also found a simpler and more suspenseful way to write songs. Sometimes he began with a scientific observation ("And when I see you, I really see you upside down/ But my brain knows better, it picks you up and turns you around") and worked his way toward an unadorned confession ("I know it's too late/ And I should have given you a reason to stay"). Songs from the album found their way to soundtracks, including that the of TV show "The OC." The sugary songs of the Postal Service became sleeper hits, too, and Mr. Gibbard found himself the figurehead of an unexpected indie-rock boom.

Whatever the cause, it wasn't Mr. Gibbard's rock-star swagger. If anything, his success seems like a byproduct of his humility. A prouder band might find defiant ways to alienate newcomers, and to keep longtime fans at arm's length. But Death Cab excels at giving listeners what they want: wistful, neatly written indie-rock ballads. Instead of insisting that we humor them (like noisier, pricklier indie bands of a decade ago), Death Cab has agreed to humor us, instead; like the Shins and Rilo Kiley, Death Cab has figured out that there's nothing wrong with being eager to please.

Now comes "Plans," which is fuller than "Transatlanticism" but otherwise quite similar. There are delicious (and, still, melancholy) songs that unfold like the last batch. "What Sarah Said" begins with some rolling keyboard chords (come to think of it, they don't sound wholly unlike something Ms. Paltrow's husband might play), and some opening remarks: "And it came to me then that every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time." (It's the closest Mr. Gibbard comes to singing the title.) By song's end, the lyrics have grown shiveringly direct: "I'm thinking of what Sarah said/ That love is watching someone die/ So who's gonna watch you die?" These are cruel words, but Mr. Gibbard sings them as if he really wants to know.

This album feels a bit more premeditated, a bit more familiar, than "Transatlanticism." (In fact, the new album ends with a throwback: "Stable Song" is a rearrangement of "Stability," which was released on an EP in 2002..) But it's a triumph all the same, with semisweet refrains that glide into your brain and refuse to leave; millions of Coldplay fans should give this CD a chance. In "I Will Follow You Into the Dark," which seems destined to become one of the album's most beloved songs, there is only an acoustic guitar to accompany Mr. Gibbard's memorable promise of endless love: "If there's no one beside you when your soul embarks/ Then I'll follow you into the dark." On this album, couples don't just part, they dearly depart.

Mr. Gibbard's lyrics have changed subtly over the years. The early albums were full of odes sung by lovers left behind. In one old song, "Company Calls Epilogue," Mr. Gibbard evoked an ex's wedding: "You were the one/ But I can't spit it out when the date's been set." Now he's as likely to be the leaver as the left. "Someday You Will Be Loved" offers cold comfort to an ex: "The memories of me will seem more like bad dreams/ Just a series of blurs like I never occurred."

On the album's first single, "Soul Meets Body," Mr. Gibbard delivers a soothing pick-up line. "You're the only song I want to hear," he sings, "A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere."

That phrase sums up what Death Cab for Cutie promises its listeners. Most bands, of course, promise far more. But it's worth remembering, too, that almost all of them wind up delivering far less.