The Narrow Stairs is refreshingly one of those albums that render a lighter tone from the band after some of those bleak few years that Death Cab for Cutie has resonated and experimented with. The band’s sixth full length progression is a stylish and edgy mix of funk and alternate rock. The lyrics are all exceptional work of creations from Ben Gibbard. Death Cab plays like the essentialist pluggin hero, comfortable in their own skins and modules, making no-effort for impressiveness but being bare rustic with their edginess.

How far can you get with this band then? Well, a lot! They have already stretched themselves like a high speed rubber ball that only hits you back with the same speed. There is a swift and easy hitting jack-in-the-box reaction with each of the songs of this album. You were prepared for the unexpected, but you get hit nonetheless.

The lucid dreaming atmospheric mood of the songs, echoing vast expanses of Muse or Church, is soulful and yet not repetitive. There is a sense of massive desolation wrapping you up and you might even think of Radiohead after a few plays. But Death Cab is here to stay very original.They make you think but not through emulating. There is a baritone of the country to them as well, with some of the rather extended acoustics.

There are a few unforgettable tracks too! For example, “No Sunlight” and “Long Division” just don’t hit the G-spot that Death Cab is famous for doing. Nonetheless one gets a major swift and flowing sensation of reaching an orgasmic uphill process by the follow through of the ride that most of the songs offer. If one can ignore the limp blips of these couple of tracks, the album is a star.

There are also those subtle nuances to each song, whose innovativeness keep them stuck on your mind for an impressively long time. There is a normal and seemingly easy-coordination of the music that is hard to miss. The first single from the album, “I Will Possess Your Heart”, is the masterpiece that is hard to not get possessed by. Some of the other compositions from this album stay quite akin to the single, all curiously compelling and begging to be listened over and over again.

Death Cab creates a hunger in your self through the hollow shines that they reflect. There have been many albums on isolation, of both the society and the individual in recent times, but few does with a rather comfortably rural sounding simplicity as they do!