Death Cab For Cutie Announce 20th Anniversary Deluxe The Photo Album Reissue

Death Cab For Cutie Announce 20th Anniversary Deluxe The Photo Album Reissue

Death Cab For Cutie’s third LP, The Photo Album, turned 20 years old on Saturday. To celebrate, the band has announced a 20th anniversary deluxe reissue.

The 35-track collection includes the original album plus the three-song Stability EP, featuring Death Cab’s cover of Björk’s “All Is Full Of Love.” A stretch of rarities and previously unreleased tracks contains “Gridlock Caravans” from the Japanese edition of the album, a recording of “Information Travels Faster” with alternate lyrics, a “dub” version of “We Laugh Indoors,” a live cover of the Stone Roses’ “I Wanna Be Adored,” and more. The set is capped off by demos for all the Death Cab originals from The Photo Album and Stability.

Our first taste of the extras is the full-band demo for deep cut “Coney Island.” Ben Gibbard accurately describes this version as “a Neil Young-stomp kind of thing,” quite different from the aesthetic later achieved by producer and bandmate Chris Walla. Gibbard continues, “It’s very indicative of the process we were employing at that point, which was to deconstruct something and build it completely back up. In that particular case, it made the song a lot more interesting and gave it a nice flavor and a loneliness that sits well on the album.”

Walla adds, “The demos are especially satisfying to me — they were recorded live to the 8-track over the course of a few days just a week before we started the album proper, and they are a beautiful, buzzing, remarkably confident set of test Polaroids for what the album would become.” Hear the “Coney Island” demo below.

TRACKLIST:
[The Photo Album]
01 “Steadier Footing”
02 “A Movie Script Ending”
03 “We Laugh Indoors”
04 “Information Travels Faster”
05 “Why You’d Want To Live Here”
06 “Blacking Out The Friction”
07 “I Was A Kaleidoscope”
08 “Styrofoam Plates”
09 “Coney Island”
10 “Debate Exposes Doubt”

[The Stability EP]
11 “20th Century Towers”
12 “All Is Full Of Love”
13 “Stability”

[Rarities & Unreleased Recordings]
14 “Gridlock Caravans”
15 “Information Travels Faster (Alternate Lyric Demo)”
16 “I Wanna Be Adored (Live)”
17 “I Was A Kaleidoscope (Live)”
18 “We Laugh Indoors (Dub)”
19 “Debate Exposes Doubt (Acoustic)”
20 “A Movie Script Ending (Acoustic)”
21 “I Was A Kaleidoscope (Acoustic, Live on KEXP)”
22 “Corny Island (Studio Outtake)”
23 “We Laugh Indoors (UK Single Mix)”

[Band Demos]
24 “Steadier Footing (Acoustic Studio Outtake)”
25 “A Movie Script Ending (Band Demo)”
26 “We Laugh Indoors (Band Demo)”
27 “Information Travels Faster (Band Demo)”
28 “Why You’d Want To Live Here (Band Demo)”
29 “Blacking Out The Friction (Band Demo)”
30 “I Was A Kaleidoscope (Band Demo)”
31 “Styrofoam Plates (Band Demo)”
32 “Coney Island (Band Demo)”
33 “Debate Exposes Doubt (Band Demo)”
34 “20th Century Towers (Band Demo)”
35 “Stable Song (Band Demo)”

The Photo Album (Deluxe Edition) is out 10/29 digitally and spring 2022 physically via Barsuk Records. Pre-order it here.

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