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Austinist Interviews Nick Harmer, Bassist of Death Cab for Cutie
A few weeks ago, Death Cab for Cutie played two sold-out, back-to-back shows at Stubb's in support of their latest album, Plans. We had a very brief chat with their bassist, the affable Nick Harmer, and discussed a wide variety of topics: their recent move to Atlantic Records, being on the road, Death Cab pushing their mid-forties, writing the Great American Novel and more. Read on for the interview!
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So we’d might as well lead in with the question everyone’s asking: with Plans, you’ve signed to a major label, Atlantic, after having been on Barsuk for so long. What are the compromises you’ve had to make in terms of your artistic integrity?
When you move from the independent world – and especially in a situation where you were in control of everything, of every bit of your business, of every bit of your creative outlet – a lot of people think that when you move to these faceless corporations, these huge record labels, that you’re going to lose everything, that everything will be stripped away from you.
But, I mean, I feel like – and granted, it’s still relatively early in our experience with Atlantic – but we haven’t really compromised anything. I feel like, if anything, the only thing we’ve compromised is our personal lives. Which is that we don’t have any at the moment. [Laughs]
[Laughs] That’s actually a really good point – I was talking with this band a few months ago and the lead singer was talking about how they tour all the time, and what happens is, invariably, when they finish the tour he goes home and for a week he finds that he can’t actually talk to people in the normal context that you would between two regular people, like “Hey, what’s going on!” Because when you’re on tour, all everyone wants to talk about is the music. Do you ever find that when you get back home that it’s hard to adjust to that?
Sometimes I do, but I’m kind of weird. My family and friends at home kind of get upset with me sometimes, because I refuse to talk about it. I really want the separation really crisp, and they’ll want to know all these details, and I won’t want to talk about it. And they’re like, “Come on, man!” [Laughs]
I find it really hard to talk about it, so I’ll try to completely divorce myself from the experiences out here. But I think that the compromise is that I’m having les and less private time at home. Once the profile of your band sort of … explodes, you kinda have less private time even out in public. We’re getting to the point now where we’re recognized when we’re walking down the street.
But, just to make it clear, for anyone who was interested or concerned about our “losing artist integrity” – we waited for a long time and built up our career and got to a point where we were able to go into a record label and tell them, “Look, this is what we want. This is what’s important to us.”
Here’s the thing, right – most of the bands getting signed nowadays haven’t even released a record with any small indie outfit.
Exactly.
For a lot of them, the label’s must be showing them how to do everything.
Exactly, and for a lot of them, I don’t think they even know what their … integrity is at that point. When you first start out, what are you about as a band? What do you want to accomplish, what do you want to do? I mean, it took us years to figure to that out. And it took us years of playing crappy shows to figure out how to be a better live band, and experimenting in studios to figure out how to make this better or that better.
Some bands, they go from nothing to everything overnight and I would expect them to have less to do with their music in their day-to-day lives. We’re hyper-involved – almost to a fault sometimes – not just with the music but with all aspects of the business development. Like Chris had a meeting where he was adamant about picking the paper stock for the album, and the finish –
Yeah, it has that comic book smell and feel!
Exactly!
… it brought me back to eighth grade.
Yep, I mean, exactly – he was very specific about that. That’s how involved we are. I mean, down to the tactile experience of holding our record in our hands.
But do you think that’s the case with most bands, that they’re able to dictate such details?
No, that’s why it’s hard sometimes when you meet a young band and they’re like, “Dude, what’s it like on Atlantic Records?” And you want to say, “Well, we’re having a good time”, but –
It’s a highly skewed perspective.
It’s an extraordinarily skewed perspective. And it’s one that comes from seven years of touring and releasing four other records. I couldn’t expect another band to have a similar experience.
Ever fantasize about being something other than a musician? I’ve always wanted to be an astronaut.
[Nods] mm-hmm, all the time. I fantasize about being – actually, it’s funny that I ended up in the music business in general. But I – sorta through school – was booking shows, and then I started working for the radio station, and then I met guys. I was always playing instruments on the side, and then it sorta worked out that we had a chance to be in a band together. And that’s sorta how it happened for me.
Well, with so many things, it’s often that something simply falls into your lap and it’s a while before you look back and realize, “Oh man, this is where I am!”
I read something in an interview or somewhere a while back – and I remember at the time thinking that it was kinda corny or cheesy – but I think now it makes more sense to me. He said, “I don’t know if I chose music so much as music chose me.” And it feels that way in some way. I never made a conscious decision that this was what I was gonna do, it just sorta worked out like this.
But what do I fantasize about doing? I’d rather be a film producer. Not like a director or an actor, but I’d really like to be on the writing and producing end of things. Coordinating big film productions, stuff like that, I think it would be really exciting. I also have fantasies about disappearing into the hills and writing the Great American Novel.
Oh god, me too. Too bad Philip Roth beat us to it. [Laughs] But yeah, every time I have a smoke that’s what I’m thinking – I know that I can! I’m ready to do this! But then it goes away.
[Laughs]
It’s horrible.
[Laughs] It’s true, it’s totally true. But it keeps you going, you know? Your daydreams. You feel like you’re on the cusp of an intellectual explosion. Or something.
Last year you guys went on a massive world tour. What were some of your favorite cities to play in?
I had a fantastic time in Prague. And I’ve always had a really fun time in Japan and Australia. But even the most miserable place you’ve ever been still makes for a good story, which makes you look back and ask, “was it really that bad?” [Laughs] I never had too much fun traveling through Spain – that’s the only country that I never really connected with.
Why?
Something about the interior of Spain. Barcelona, the other coastal cities were fine, but Madrid feels very landlocked, very trapped.
I can see that in you guys. There’s a need to get away – a need to be able to escape as quickly as possible.
Exactly! And something about being near water … it always gives you the hope that there’s a future out there [Laughs]
So you guys have been around for close to a decade.
It’s true. We were just joking about how we were on our ten year reunion tour.
Well, think about it this way: your twenties are going to be defined as the decade when you were traveling the world, playing tons and tons of shows – I mean, you must have played upwards of a thousand shows.
Yeah, we were actually trying to add it up the other day. I can’t remember what we came to, but it was pretty scary. At least back in 2004, we were on the road for 210 days out of the year. We still have the ambition that someday in our mid-forties we’re going to do the “Death Cab for Cutie One Hundred Shows in One Hundred Days Tour” [Laughs]
Oh god.
I’m serious, I think it would be fantastic! I think it would have to be our last gasp, you know?
I think it would be, literally. [Laughs] But back to the question: now that you’re in your late twenties, do you ever feel a certain terror about getting older?
No, not really. I mean, that’s the thing about it – I actually like growing older, and I like the fact that our music is going to grow with it. I like the fact that the kind of music that we make isn’t youth-driven or youth-oriented, where we’re singing about, like, getting our skateboards confiscated by the police.
Indeed, I mean, this last album is very dark. It actually has some heady, existentialist themes to it.
[Laughs] Totally, yeah.
I was listening to it just earlier and thinking, “Oh my god, this is fucking morbid!” And yet Ben is so happy when he sings it. It’s really deceiving!
[Laughs] There’s some of that in there, for sure. It’s a little sugar for the medicine.
What’s next for you guys then? Surely you’re already thinking about the next album
Oh yeah, yeah we’re always talking. It’s funny, we’re on the first tour of this record, and we’ve still got a whole shit-ton of touring to do next year. And … is shit-ton an accurate measurement? I’m not sure but –
I think it is. Officially. Now.
Yeah, okay. But we do have a lot on the plate right now. [Awkward combination of metaphors?]
Ben’s said time and time again that the next record is going to be a guitar record. Whereas this record went more along the piano-keyboard direction, already he’s said that he thinks he just wants to write everything on the guitar next time. So I dunno what that means yet, and we’re still eighteen months away.
I’m not sure that he does, either. I mean, it must all still be fermenting in the back of his mind.
That’s exactly right. We go through periods of input and output – we just had “output” phase, so between now and when we go back to the studio is all “input.”
Were you sick of the album by the time you’d finished it?
Umm, not actually, no – we’re the kind of band that doesn’t really take our music out on the road and play it live, and we’ll save it all up and go into the studio and record it. So it kind of unfolds differently for me; I’m always really excited about the live shows, and how the songs are going to work there. And you just don’t know!
It’s funny, which songs you think people would react to really well versus the songs they actually react to really well. I’ll be the first one to admit that when we finished “Title and Registration” on Transatlanticism, I said I just didn’t think that song was going to fly. And now we play it and it’s like a standard in every set! It’s interesting to see which songs stick.
So, at the end of the day, what’s your music about?
I think ultimately our music is about four guys in the world, trying to figure out our place in it. Ben writes songs about relationships, and I think that no song about a boy and a girl is just about a boy and a girl.
Of course, there’s always subtext.
Exactly – I used to think for a long time that U2’s “With Or Without You” was just about Bono and his girl and how he can’t live without her. But now I think it’s about his relationship to music and his relationship to his spirituality. I really think that now that when he’s saying, “and you give yourself away” – I think he’s talking about giving yourself to the public. And he’s saying this again and again and again, and he means that the music is so important to him that he can’t … not do it, but it takes so much from him when he does do it.
But, like literature, it’s almost more about what you’re reading into it. What I mean is, might this be reflecting how you guys are feeling at this point in your careers?
Totally.
