Death Cab Prep Major-Label Debut

According to a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Ben Gibbard and his bandmates spent the last month cooped up in a rural farmhouse in Massachusetts, completing tracks for Plans, their much anticipated follow-up to the breakthrough album Translanticism.

"We are virtually in the middle of nowhere," Gibbard told Rolling Stone. Along with isolation, the band has adopted other habits of rural America-- frequent trips to the liquor store and gambling. "One of the only spots, there was this huge Halloween store," Gibbard said in the interview, "So we blew $300 on Knights of the Round Table costumes for everybody. There's a stable here and we were hoping to take some pictures with the horses. That's how bored we've become."

While the rest of the boys play dress-up and mingle with the local folk, guitarist and producer Chris Walla is laying down tracks, as he did with Transatlanticism.

"I think they both feed one another," Walla explained to Rolling Stone about producing and being in the band. "Rock shows are like primary colors, big and bold, and then you can get away from that and come in and put things under the microscope."

Despite the drastic changes of being transplanted to Long View, Mass., the quartet is on their way to completing the album. The album-- with proposed song titles such as, "I Will Follow You Into the Dark", "Someday You Will Be Loved", and "Your Heart Is an Empty Room"-- is likely to emulate the group's previous work with lyrical ballads of love and loss. Gibbard wrote the songs while on short breaks between touring. He rented an apartment, moved in a piano and penned lyrics for Plans, which is named after one of the singer's favorite jokes: "How do you make God laugh? Make a plan."

Death Cab for Cutie: http://www.deathcabforcutie.com/