That’s one of my favorite lyrics of all time. Bar none. It’s from a song simply titled “The Piano Song.” The band that wrote it were called Carissa’s Wierd. They used to play around the Seattle area (two of their members now make up the group Band Of Horses, who were recently reviewed on this site) and they made some of the most beautifully sad music I’ve ever heard. Most people have never heard of them. So it goes.

Now you’re probably wondering what, if anything, that has to do with Death Cab For Cutie’s latest album (their fifth), Plans. The short answer is a lot.

The title of the album comes from the song “What Sara Said“ where over a rolling piano melody, lead singer Ben Gibbard says “Every plan made is a tiny deal with Father Time“ all while watching a friend slowly die. Death is a theme here. On “Soul Meets Body”, Gibbard uses his boy next door tenor to great effect telling someone (maybe the listener) “If the silence takes you/than I hope it takes me too.”

A few songs later we get the biggest surprise of the album, “I Will Follow You Into The Dark,” a lament for a soon departed friend/lover (you never can tell with Death Cab) that strips away all of the rolling percussion and intricate guitar that have been their bread and butter and leaves us with Gibbard alone with an acoustic guitar. It’s one of those rare moments in music that Death Cab seem able to effortlessly pull off: emotional honesty. Not that young boys with loud guitar type of emotion but one wiser and more knowing than even the narrator would like to admit.

The album is also a platform for guitarist Chris Walla to show off his underrated production chops. His added keyboards give both scope and depth to songs that would otherwise either wilt under their own ambition (“Different Names For The Same Things“) or would come up as nice starts but not really go anywhere (“Marching Bands Of Manhattan” and “Summer Skin”, which compares an ending relationship to a sunburn. Ouch.) But back to my original point.

Anyone who has listened to a fair amount of DCFC’s work knows that the journey is always more important than the destination. Most of their songs don’t really go much of anywhere and often that’s their best quality. They allow their listeners to take from them what they need, when they need it. On Plans, Death Cab take on some of the big ideas in life (death, love gained/lost, mostly lost, although sadly no songs about taxes) and they reach no real definite conclusions. They leave that up to you.

And considering this is a band that named themselves after a Bonzo The Doo Dah Dog Band song, it would not surprise me if they didn’t have a little known band from their hometown on their mind when they made this.