Death Cab for Cutie swung by Jimmy Kimmel Live recently to perform “Riptides,” and honestly, it was the kind of performance that makes you remember why you’ve loved this band for years. There’s something about hearing Ben Gibbard’s voice on a late-night stage that just hits different.
The single itself is exactly what you’d expect from the band at this point in their career: melancholic, introspective, and deceptively upbeat in its arrangement. The lyrics pull no punches. “I’m too tired to talk, I’m too tired to end the war,” Gibbard sings, and you can practically feel the weight of that exhaustion through the screen. It’s a song about Personal struggles colliding with collective chaos, and honestly, who can’t relate to that right now?
The track comes from I Built You a Tower, the band’s 11th studio album dropping June 5 via ANTI- Records. They recorded itat Animal Rites in Los Angeles and various home studios across Seattle, Bellingham, and Portland, with John Congleton handling production duties. Three weeks of recording sessions went into the whole thing, which is remarkably efficient for a band that’s been at this for over two decades.
If you want to catch them live, Death Cab is hitting the road for a North American summer tour. The official kickoff is July 10 in Minneapolis after a warm-up show in Denver earlier that month, and the run wraps up August 9 at Outside Lands in San Francisco. For those across the pond, they’ve got shows scheduled in the U.K. and Europe throughout September and October.
What strikes me about this era of Death Cab is their stubborn refusal to chase whatever’s popular. They’re still writing about emotional exhaustion and the messiness of being human, and honestly, that’s worth more than any hit single.
