Death Cab For Cutie - “Grapevine Fires”
Narrow Stairs has quickly become my favorite album of 2008, and one of the best albums I’ve listened to in probably the past year. Something about it has just kept bringing me back to it; and by it I don’t mean a song or two, I mean listening to the entire thing end-to-end. I’ve found “Bixby Canyon Bridge”, “I Will Possess Your Heart”, and “Cath” to be my favorites (so I guess I prefer the first half of the album overall).
But the last couple days “Grapevine Fires” has become my favorite tune. This is just my take, but it seems to reference the San Diego wildfires of last October, and a happy couple who in the midst of it all, found a way to escape to the tensions and fears of the fire in a lonely graveyard. There they danced and soaked it all in, without any fear of the destruction occuring. It was inevitable, and in the moment they could just enjoy their time alone together, and worry about everything else later.
On another level, in the progression of the album, it’s symbolic of the voice of the album; perhaps he knows that his relationship is doomed to an ugly - or at least unfavorable - end, like the unfortunate reality of most of the relationships we enter.
I’m still trying to decypher exactly how it fits together as a story, but there definitely is one. Maybe “Bixby Canyon Ridge” is the narrator reflecting back on everything that comes before that. (So technically, maybe it should be viewed as the last song. Try listening to the album that way, with “I Will Possess Your Heart” as the first track. It definitely works for me.)
Just the fact that I can break this album apart like this shows the depth of the work. I’m by no means a diehard Death Cab fan. I’ve seen them in concert a couple times and been moderately impressed, although I think Transatlanticism is dead on for what it sets out to achieve, and quite the album. But this may be their defining album. It all seems to work for me. Over and over again.
When the wind picked up the fire spread
And the grapevines seemed left for dead
And the Northern sky looked like the end of days
The end of days
The wake-up call to a rented room
Sounded like an alarm of impending doom
To warn us it’s only a matter of time
Before we all burn
Before we all burn
Before we all burn
Before we all burn
We bought some wine and some paper cups
Near your daughters school when we picked her up
And drove to a cemetery on a hill
On a hill
And we watched the plumes paint the sky gray
But she laughed and danced through the field of graves
And there I knew it would be alright
That everything would be alright
Would be alright
Would be alright
Would be alright
And the news reports on the radio
Said it was getting worse
As the ocean air fanned the flames
But I couldn’t think
Of anywhere I would of rather been
To watch it all burn away
To burn away
And the firemen worked in double shifts
With prayers for rain on their lips
And they knew it was only a matter of time
