If there is one thing I think I have accomplished, it’s that I always thought of myself as a very literal songwriter, and as I look at some of those older records.
BEN GIBBARDThere are the people that are like, “I want it to sound like the last one.” You can’t please everybody all the time, but I think for the most part we tend to maintain a healthy level of self-reference to kind of make sure we continue to push things forward.
More Ben Gibbard Quotes
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We never sit down before we start making a record and talk about this new sonic palette that we are going to try to explore. We always let the record kind of reveal itself to us over time.
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I feel like there’s a lot of beauty in the darkness of ‘Narrow Stairs,’ but that’s not really a place I’m ready to go to for a while. I’m interested in taking a different approach and having the next record be different in tone – I’m just not interested in making another dark, dark album.
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I can remember how I sang – a little more nasal-y back then. Listening to those old recordings is like seeing a photograph of yourself from 10 years ago. You’re wearing what you thought looked cool at the time. You had your hair styled the particular way you thought looked cool.
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I think sometimes a narrative can come out of a single word.
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Now that we have the resources, we’re like, “Oh wow, a nice studio is pretty nice! They do have nice outboards here. It’s actually a pretty good place.” It’s funny how much changes so quickly.
BEN GIBBARD -
Nada Surf and Harvey Danger are good bands. I think they’ve just stayed true to why they play music in the first place, it’s just because they love doing it and they love each other and that’s the impetus for doing it, not trying to keep singles on the radio and on MTV.
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We would scoff at the idea of a nice studio. “Why would you want to go to a nice studio? Oh wow, they have really expensive gear. Ooh, that’s really fancy. Well we’ve got an eight-track. We’ve got it going on here.”
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There’s a cinematic quality that happens in my mind when I hear something that really lands. An album is just a journal of a life moving through time.
BEN GIBBARD -
For me, a song doesn’t really take flight until it has a lyric on it. …Without a lyric that I’m happy with, it could be the greatest song ever melodically or arrangement-wise, but it doesn’t have any resonance.
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We had friends who had a hit single on the radio and sold 500,000 records, and then they couldn’t get arrested a year later.
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I like writing on piano and a computer, and a lot of ‘Plans’ came out of samples and vocal lines.
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I’ve always had a soft spot for Phil Collins. He’s a great vocalist.
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More times than not, it’s a failed endeavor. You will fail more times than you succeed. But I think you need those failed endeavors.
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There were two recording studios in Bellingham. One was really expensive, a “nice studio.” We were at the point where we were young and irreverent.
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I don’t want to be overly dramatic and say it’s the only thing that gets me up and keeps me going. But people in your life come and go.
BEN GIBBARD