Death Cab For Cutie have released new single ‘Roman Candles’, the lead single from their highly-anticipated forthcoming album Asphalt Meadows. The new track from the band – celebrating their 25th year – is out now via Atlantic Records. The new album will be released on September 16th and it’s their tenth studio effort, the first in four years. Asphalt Meadows was produced by GRAMMY Award winning Producer John Congleton, who has worked previously with St. Vincent, Sharon Van Etten and Wallows amongst many others.
The band shared more on the inspirations of the new single: “‘Roman Candles’ is about the crippling, existential dread that goes hand in hand with living in a nervous city on a dying planet. And that the only way to be in the moment is to let it all go.” The song also comes with a lyric video that was designed by Juliet Bryant, who has also worked with Justin Vernon, Japanese Breakfast and Laura Jane Grace.
The track was born from co-founder, lead vocalist, and guitarist Benjamin Gibbard’s determination to create something succinct and less oblique. He shares: “The lyrics were cobbled from a couple of different songs dealing with my general sense of anxiety; the feeling that the fabric that weaves a functioning society together was crumbling during the pandemic.”
Formed in Bellingham, Washington in 1997, Death Cab for Cutie entered the ranks of the era’s definitive bands, fueled in large part by Gibbard’s complex, often bittersweet songwriting. The band made their worldwide popular breakthrough with 2003’s gold certified Transatlanticism, later named by NPR as one of ‘The Decade’s 50 Most Important Recordings.’
It’s been four years since Death Cab For Cutie’s ninth studio album Thank You For Today. The band continued to affirm their legacy with a wide range of creative activity in the years that followed, including collaborations with Chance the Rapper’s on 2019 album track, ‘Do You Remember‘ and Tycho & Gibbard’s acclaimed 2021 single, ‘Only Love‘.
Photo: Benjamin Gibbard
