The RIAA can finally feel cooler than me. Jerks.

So I just got back from a trip that involved a 4 hour bus ride and 100 minute train ride each way. This is a lot of time to sit and do nothing…and since I’m not one to be productive the first week of summer, I brought with me two crucial entertainment objects—my iPod, and the latest copy of Rolling Stone (which I was forced to purchase, by the way, because all of a sudden Spin is very obscure in convenient stores, and which also, by the way, appeared pornographic thanks to the ladies of the Hills stripping on the cover). I was very excited to have a solid amount of time to engross myself in Death Cab’s latest album, which came out right before I left.

Okay, I lied. It came out the very day I left. Knowing I wouldn’t have time to buy it (which I really would have done, I swear. No one wants to contribute to the Buy Ben Gibbard Some Actually Fashionable Glasses Fund more than me) I downloaded it off the internet. And I don’t mean off of iTunes, either.

Now I’ll admit that I have done my share of downloading in my years, and I’ve been cursed a couple of times. Back in my Kazaa days (God, that program was awful) once in a while I’d be treated with a corrupted file that would turn into loud alien static at the end of a song. Luckily, I would only end up listening to these songs when I was falling asleep alone in a dark, creepy house. Or driving alone for the first time in the middle of a severe thunderstorm.

But it was never like this. I only reserve this title for the extremely elite, but the dudes who recently fucked up my illegal Narrow Stairs experience…they were some crafty motherfuckers.

So, on principal, I decide to give the entire album a listen first—start to finish—before I open my Rolling Stone to see what they have to say (although I can already see that it says on the cover, “Death Cab For Cutie: 4 Stars”). It’s…okay…Death Cab has done better, but this definitely resembles some of their better older stuff, and I’m sure that it will grow on me.

I open the article and instantly agree. This album is dark, man, dark as fuck, if the fucking we’re talking about is illegal, immoral and heartbreaking. And yeah, it does kind of sound like it was recorded in a tiny room picking up all kinds of reverbs and what not. But as I read on, I swear that I never heard any of the lyrics featured in this feature once. I mean, of course I recognized that “Cath…” was about an unhappy, unfulfilling marriage, but I didn’t think he actually ever said it outright. It was just one of those things I kind of knew. In hindsight. After reading the article. And it would seem cheesy if he ever actually sang the words “Talking Bird.” DCFC was just trying to pull a Brand New and make really obscure unmentioned song titles. Riieeeght?

Nah, man. Thank god for Wikipedia. The album I had listened to was actually by an obscure German band called Velveteen who “leaked” the “New Death Cab” album as an April Fool’s Joke. Real funny and all, but come on guys. If you’re sure everyone is going to fall for you calling yourself Death Cab, and you aren’t as good as Death Cab, why even exist? I mean, they’re slightly more depressing than Death Cab, I will give them that, and that is no small feat.