Death Cab for Cutie’s songs exist, first and foremost, so that Ben Gibbard’s lyrics can be heard. That’s a good thing. As introspective singer-songwriters go, Gibbard is smarter than most. And his sharply observed, sad-eyed accounts of shipwrecked romances and lost opportunities rarely resolve the messes of real life into too-tidily tied-up three-minute solutions.
The melodies gleam, the arrangements are grand, and the sales figures soar through the roof. And the lyrics? Super-sensitive, banal, cloying. “Lights will guide you home, and ignite your bones,” Chris Martin rhymed, ickily, on Coldplay’s 2005 album X&Y, which moved a mere 10 million copies. “And I will try / To fix you.”
Lyrics seeming to exalt cocaine in a new song by French first lady Carla Bruni drew a protest Thursday from Colombia’s foreign affairs minister.
Play (and playwrights): August: Osage County (Tracy Letts. Book-Musical: Passing Strange (Stew). Original Score (music and/or lyrics): In the Heights (Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda).
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