Far-Out Name, Earthbound Band
Seattle indie quartet tries to keep rock star behaviour to quick trips on Pearl Jam’s plane
John Kendle



The touring combination of Scottish band Franz Ferdinand and Seattle’s Death Cab for Cutie must be a promoter’s dream.

The Franz boys are a vigorous, ballsy new wave pop/rock act whose sartorial splendour is second to none. DCFC is a melodic, soundscapey quartet defined by the plaintive vocals and introspective lyrics of singer/guitarist Ben Gibbard.

Franz Ferdinand took the U.K. by storm on the basis of its 2004 debut album, while DCFC is a nine-year-old entity that has been on a slow but steady rise. Its most recent album, Plans, was its major-label debut (for Atlantic Records), and it surprised almost everybody when it entered the Billboard charts at No. 4 in its first week on the shelves.

The two bands have like-minded fans and so have been able to fill soft-seater halls and small arenas to capacity while touring with modern British punkers The Cribs as an opening act. They’re even aware of where on the continent each band is popular. While Cuties closed all the tour’s U.S. shows (and its recent gig in Toronto, too), Franz Ferdinand will do the honours as the tour wends it way West across Canada — a nod to the fact the Scots have a strong following in this country.

“It’s billed and structured to be a co-headline show,” explains DCFC bassist Nick Harmer. “Each band plays the same amount of time, even with built-in encores and things like that. And each of us has our own full show that we’re doing.”

Reports from recent gigs suggest that the Death Cabbers offer a fairly visual performance replete with an imaginative stage set and moody light show. Franz Ferdinand, meanwhile, prefer to carry their show with their kinetic presence.

Response to the tour so far, Harmer says, has been happily enthusiastic.

“It’s a really dynamic night of music that, with three bands, doesn’t start to sound monochromatic at all. Each band is good at their own particular thing, but there’s always going to be a percentage of each band’s fans that’s not going to be into the other band’s things, but fortunately that percentage has been really small.”

Harmer’s pleased with the response because, even after Plans made such an initial impression, he and his bandmates were a little nervous about how older fans would take to them after the group moved from the independent Seattle-based Barsuk label, its home for four albums, to the mighty Atlantic.

Fortunately, the group’s honest, straightforward approach has stood it in good stead. Few, if any, people are crying ‘Sellout!’ from the orchestra pit in front of stage.

“It’s always been important to us be the same people offstage as we are onstage,” Harmer explains. “We’ve never really carried ourselves with a false sense of entitlement or deservedness.

“We’re very happy and passionate about what we do, but we also realize that there are other bands out there who work just as hard but don’t get the same kind of attention.”

A key to the group’s modest, self-effacing appeal may be found in its working methods, which give each Harmer and drummer Jason McGerr equal opportunity to contribute, even if Gibbard is the acknowledged mainman and guitar/keyboardist Chris Walla is producer of the band’s recordings.

“Typically, Ben goes off and writes a bunch of demos and brings them back to us in various stages of completion,” Harmer says. “Some are just the germ of an idea, while others are completely fleshed out, and we, quite literally, sit around in the living room and talk about which ones we’re reacting to and which ones we’re excited about working on. We kind of pare it down from there and then roll our sleeves up and start working on things.

“A lot of our writing credits come from arrangement suggestions, never lyrically. Ben writes all the lyrics, as well as the melodies to what he sings,” he continues. “I like to say it’s less like chemistry and more like farming.

“Ben brings in a bunch of seeds, and Chris sets up the field for us, and then we plant ’em and we all work the field, and who knows what turns out. It’s very organic that way.

“I think the excitement would be stripped out of it if we approached it more like a science. We prefer to just throw a bunch of stuff in and see what happens.”

The band’s golden rule is that no one can dismiss a musical idea without offering another in its place, Harmer says.

“Otherwise it’s just ‘I don’t know. I just don’t like it’ all the time, and that doesn’t get you anywhere.”

This fiercely democratic approach is probably also what keeps the egos of the DCFC boys in check. Travelling on Pearl Jam’s private jet during the 2004 Vote for Change tour and campaign is “the most rock star thing we’ve ever done,” Harmer says.

Harmer also believes the group members do a good job of watching out for each other, which they’ve done since their earliest days travelling in smelly vans and sleeping on floors while on tour.

Gibbard founded the band in Bellingham, Wash., in 1997 as a way to fill out and perform songs he had written and recorded on his own. Schoolmates Harmer and Walla signed on back then, and third drummer McGerr joined in 2003.

Their eye-catching band name was taken from the title of a song by eccentric British group the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, who actually performed the tune on the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour television special for the BBC in 1967. It’s the kind of name that sounds cool when you’re 20 and bored, but now it probably serves as a reminder of how far the group has come.

“There are times when you’re like, ‘Wow, this is just crazy,’” Harmer acknowledges. “But we’ve been a band for nine years now, through five full-length albums, and our growth has been fairly measured and pretty comfortable since Day 1,” he says.

“We’ve been able to get used to each new phase of the band, in our personal lives and psychologically, sort of together.

“But there are moments when you’re not sure how far out on the ledge you really are standing.”