Asphalt Meadows

An undeniable triumph, Asphalt Meadows is likely to gain the group new listeners, as well as thrill old fans.

Asphalt Meadows is neither a nostalgic rehash of earlier heights nor a workmanlike product lacking innovation or novelty. It is instead a statement that this band can both occupy space in the indie rock pantheon while at the same time producing new work deserving of consideration with some of their finest early work.

Death Cab are back with a bang and a new-found self-assurance.

They've managed to create an album that feels fresh while also being the closest they've come to recreating the magic of earlier records. This is a band that has finally found a way to evolve without eliminating what it was that made them so special in the first place.

‘Asphalt Meadows’ may not be a lockdown record, but it’s one that finds its voice in emerging into musical freedoms found in separation.

The stories collected on Death Cab For Cutie's tenth album are rich in both detail and substance, with solidary lines that can unravel you. [Oct 2022, p.82]

‘Asphalt Meadows’ is as assured and stately as you’d expect and hope for from indie veterans now 10 albums and 25 years into their career, but this beaut is as consistent and satisfying as their early-mid ‘00s career peak.

Characteristically textbook Death Cab – dolloping shimmering guitars atop stomping percussion, as decadent choruses burst through nostalgic lyricism like an uncontainable smile. Their knack for spry, melancholic indie-rock remains unrivalled and makes for yet another memorable release.

Death Cab for Cutie underscore their range and numerous eras on Asphalt Meadows. Uniting the past and the present, it’s the perfect mnemonic for this band’s legacy.

Asphalt Meadows not only lives up to but truly, actually fulfils the promise of Death Cab for Cutie – of music not always new, or unique, or 'experimental', but always, always genuine, and always, always packed with meaning and emotion.

The introductory duo of “I Don’t Know How I Survive” and “Roman Candles” position Asphalt Meadows as a clean break from the slick competence of Kintsugi and Thank You for Today. ... A record that mostly satisfies through course correction.

Overall, Asphalt Meadows is a fine record from a band so deep into their career they really have nothing left to prove — except, it seems, to themselves.

It’s simply another good collection of melancholic indie-rock – and sometimes, that comfort in familiarity is just what you need.

Asphalt Meadows acquits itself well. It’s there within the measured tread and stark atmospherics of "Peppers", or the twinkling sun goes down gorgeousness of “Fragments from the Decade” where loose limbed almost jazzy drums shuffle off into the distance, of course your mileage may vary according to your own particular emotional pressure points.