The Lightness of Chris Walla, pt. 2 (Human Pursuits 9/2/23)
The producer and former Death Cab for Cutie guitarist returns for the thrilling sequel, featuring his feelings on 'Tiny Vessels', meeting Ben Gibbard, big chunes, bigger set pieces, and more.
VANCOUVER – Let’s be honest: sequels rarely outshine the original. Sure, you might squeak out your own personal Empire Strikes Back. But more often than not you’re looking at Mean Girls 2. An unnecessary addendum, at best, or a toxic addition at worse.
This is what I considered before I asked Chris Walla for a second interview. Why not let the interview exist as its own thing? Who cares if you didn’t get deep in the weeds on ‘Expo ‘86’?! You had the conversation. Enjoy it for what it was.
But, still, I had questions. So when Chris was generous enough to offer more of his time, I greedily accepted. And, boy, am I happy I did. Our second conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, unearthed some real gems about the recording of Transatlanticism, his first time meeting Ben Gibbard and Nick Harmer, details about his departure from the band, and the weirdest thing they got Atlantic Records to pay for while promoting Plans.
And so, we take it from the top. Roll tape.
Read pt. 1 of our conversation here.
ES: Bringing it to Transatlanticism. Where does that record sit with you right now? I was a little sheepish to ask you about it the first time around. I didn’t want to reduce you to this one piece of work.
CW: I love Transatlanticism. I’m really fond of it. My memories of making it with the band are really good, that was a really fun time. I think it’s a really good record.
ES: I was listening to it this morning, it holds up.
CW: Each of Death Cab’s records has a voice. I think one of the things that makes Transatlanticism tick is that it is emotionally and topically more well-rounded than some of the other records. There’s some joy in Transatlanticism. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with joylessness in albums. But a couple of the albums are pretty joyless. Those other records are important… But in emotional terms, Transatlanticism is more like a real person. It’s emotionally complex, it covers a lot of different ground. There’s some real anger and some real regret and some real keening and reaching. And there’s some real joy and some real ambivalence and some real loss. The fact that all of those songs landed at the same place and time, as the band was in transition onboarding Jason was just a stroke of luck.
ES: You mention the wide array of emotions. I was struck by the contrast between a song like ‘Tiny Vessels’ which some consider misogynistic in 2023, and a song like ‘Passenger Seat’ which is quite poetic, and Ben’s ability to explore these different emotions so well.
CW: Again I just think it’s really human. The fury and the anger in ‘Tiny Vessels’ is… It’s pretty high school and it’s pretty dismissive, but it’s also really honest… And to deny that there is an impulsive, kind of juvenile teenage part of each of us, is to deny the experience of growing up, from your teens into your twenties, into your thirties. You just carry some of that stuff around. Mercifully, that song is relatively benign. I might think it’s a little cringe-y but it’s not claws and blood, it’s not…
ES: It’s not Taking Back Sunday.
CW: Exactly. And the thing is that’s because that’s who the writer is. Ben’s not like that. He’s a really solid, good, decent guy, who gets really hurt and pissed off sometimes. Like we all do. So there’s something in that song that’s relatable. And I think that’s kind of the important thing. And it’s in a larger body of work where there’s a lot of balance. There’s a lot of colour there.
ES: Or even ‘A Lack of Color.’
Sorry.
Where is your relationship with Ben and the band right now? Is it weird to see them touring this album and not being part of it – or are you happy with where things are at?
CW: I think I’m happy with where things are at. I miss playing music with those guys and I miss shooting the shit about records with them, and I also don’t miss being in the band. I think that, with a lot of time and distance in the rearview, I’m happy I left. It’s not without sadness and it’s not without a twinge of remorse. But it was time for me to leave…
My relationship with those guys is positive… One of the last times I was in Seattle I saw Ben for the first time in years. And that was really good. It was just nice to hang out with him. He’s just a lovely guy and we did a lot of really good stuff together [in the band]. It’s interesting to have the experience of taking a parallel fork in the road and knowing the truck is still over there. To meet back up and compare notes is fascinating. They’re really good guys and I like them and I’m not in a band with them anymore. And that’s alright.
ES: The impression I’ve always had was that you left the band because you were sick of touring. Was there more to it than that?
CW: It’s not that. There was a lot more to it. I think the popular story is I was sick of touring. That’s not really what happened. The larger issue for me was… I have to be connected to the songs. I have to be connected to what’s going into the microphones and what’s coming out of the speakers. And I got to a point where that was happening less and less for me, with what Ben was bringing in.
I was the producer for the first round of Kintsugi. We tracked four or five of those songs at Hall of Justice and it was going well, it was moving quickly. I was just a little bored… The songs are good, they were fine. But they felt really remote to me and I was really struggling with that. I think it was kind of a surprise when I said [to the band] after a week and a half of work “I’m not the guy to do this.”
[Producer] Rich Costey was one of the guys I suggested… I viewed going into the studio with him as a way to view the record and the record-making process… Through somebody else’s eyes and ears… And what I discovered in that period of time was, Rich was kind of pulling on all the same strings I was trying to pull on. In some cases, he figured out how to unlock some doors and move forward, and in others, he hit the same emotional and narrative walls that I was starting to hit…
That was the first time we’d ever done more than a single song with another producer. And it was after that first set of sessions that I felt like I was never going to connect with more than the occasional song Ben was writing, in the way I did with so many of the earlier tunes. I was feeling it was unlikely I would find a path forward in the band. If I was going to find a path forward it would have to be in the absence of a real emotional connection to the songs. I thought about that a lot and that, to me, just sounds like contract work. It sounds like you’re showing up for the paycheque. The paycheque in Death Cab for Cutie is really fucking good, we signed the smartest deal we could’ve possibly signed with Atlantic Records. It’s not a 360 deal, we keep all our own merch money and all our own touring receipts. It is a gravy gig, it is good as it gets. To walk away from that, on a practical, lifestyle level, was a real choice. But the alternative was to stay on and just go through the motions. That felt terrible to me and it didn’t feel like it was a fair thing for the band.
After that first set of sessions, I told them I wanted to leave the band. It was just… ugh. It was pretty brutal. It was really sad and there was a lot of [them] not understanding, and not being able to process that I was leaving. Over the course of a couple of months, they said “Well you could just not tour,” or “Well we could do it like this…” It became really clear they didn’t want me to leave. And I sort of felt like I really had to.
So yeah, touring was a fairly small piece of the pie. It was really a creative and emotional decision at the core.
ES: It sounds like you were facing a creative spiritual death staying in the band which, obviously, having talked to you a bit, is not the decision you would make… But so many other artists might’ve stayed. That must have been a hard conversation.
CW: It was a lot of devastating conversations. I told the band and then it was seven or eight months until it was actually done and I played my last show. We finished Kintsugi together and that was really strange. There were moments when the spark caught something dry and could burn but a lot of it was pretty damp. That record was just a real challenge to work through. The conversations with Nick and Ben were like that too. Sometimes it was really jovial and fine and sometimes it felt like talking with a ghost. Like, wow this is already gone.
ES: I couldn’t find a lot of details about this online, but I understand you and Ben and Nick met in university. Did you hit it off right away?
CW: I hit it off with Ben right away. A mutual friend of ours that I went to high school with introduced us… We went to see his old band at a basement show in Bellingham. They were a pop-punk band, sort of on the continuum between MxPx and Treepeople.
ES: Woah.
CW: They were actually pretty good. Ben was wearing an XXL Teenage Fanclub t-shirt.
ES: Of course he was.
CW: Yeah and I was like “Okay, cool. We should hang out.” And pretty quickly, within a few months, we were recording some stuff together. This would’ve been 1995 or 1996. We recorded a fair bit of stuff together, a few of my songs where he played drums. Actually, first, it was mostly my songs. We didn’t get into stuff that would turn into Death Cab stuff until a bit later.
And I met Nick there at some point. Nick was playing in a band with Jason, called Shed and then they turned into Eureka Farm. Those guys were great. The frontman for that band, named Arman Bohn was a hub that we all circled around. We were all friends with him.
ES: When it comes to songwriting, was it a Lennon-McCartney thing? Like, were you actually sitting down and writing together, or was it even more of a [The Beatle’s producer] George Martin thing?
CW: It wasn’t like that at all. Ben is the lyrical focal point for everything and he’s very protective of that. Musically what would happen is that sometimes songs would come in fully formed and it would be really obvious that it was ready. “This is it, we should do this.” Sometimes the song would come in and be desperately crying for a bridge or some sort of C part.
‘Expo ‘86’ is a really good example of that. The bridge of that song… I have a writing credit on that song… we needed a break from the repetitive sing-song eighth note thing. I just wanted something that soared. So that melody in that section is mine.
ES: I was listening to the demo for that song this morning and noticed the bridge wasn’t there.
CW: Yeah it’s not in there. A lot of the time it was stuff like that. With something like ‘Title and Registration,’ my contribution was that I felt the chord progression was not serving the lyrics. This story is so oblique and suspended. Having an oblique suspended story over an oblique suspended chord progression, like emotionally when do I put this on, when do I want to listen to this? And the answer was “I kind of don’t.” So the idea was to put something under it that was really grounded and kind of lyrical in its own way. To try and retrofit some melody into it that supported Ben’s vocal melody and the story he was singing… I just wanted a light to come on inside the song.
It’s interesting to talk about because my contributions are sometimes really traditional song-writing sorts of things, and sometimes they’re like a really big production change that becomes a signature of the song and is really difficult to strip out.
ES: You seem to always have a great knack for knowing how to interject yourself into a piece of art, and then service it until it’s the best version it can be.
CW: So long as that version of the art is not at the expense of the wellbeing or the spirit of the people making the art. That’s something I learned in fits and starts through a couple of records, including Sainthood. Your idea can be the best idea in the world, but if the artist doesn’t believe in it, or can’t go for it…Then you can only push on it so far… The chances of it being good are pretty slim.
ES: Going back to the Transatlanticism demos, I notice the title track sounds an awful lot like The Postal Service, but it also sounds a bit like your solo album Tape Loops. Where did that ambient influence come from? I know you played a part in bringing The Postal Service to life.
CW: Mhm. I did guitars for three or four songs, I did the vocals for a couple of songs. I think I did the recorded drums on a song. I didn’t play on any of them but just recorded and advised. In terms of that specific demo, Ben was spending some time in Belgium at that point. With Styrofoam. I think he had some connections in Berlin and was getting into a particular corner of Notwist-leaning electronic music. [Editor’s note: if you haven’t heard of The Notwist don’t feel too bad, they were unknown to me before this interview.] And at that point, I was kind of somewhere else. I was into Eno from the time I was 13 or 14. But there wasn’t a lot of cross-over at that point in terms of what Ben and I were listening to. The way ‘Transatlanticism’ works on the record, it comes from a few different things. The core of the song is in the demo. It’s built a little bit like Eno’s ‘The Big Ship,’ which is on Another Green World. It’s one part that, one part Weezer’s ‘Only in Dreams,’ that was a literal discussion and a literal choice.
ES: That’s so interesting.
CW: And the transition out of ‘Tiny Vessels’ was lifted from an INXS record. There’s a record called The Swing and the transition from the song ‘Face the Change’ into the song ‘Burn for You,’ I’ve loved that transition my whole life. It’s just a beautiful way to do a scene change and those songs presented a perfect opportunity to do that. The way the guitar part works, that lead line I did, I think Death Cab is more indebted to a band called Gene than any other member of the band has acknowledged. There’s a song called ‘London, Can You Wait’ by Gene. It doesn’t sound anything like Death Cab for Cutie, really, but there are some things in the song. The way the changes on the bottom work in the big rock & roll bridge, and the way the melody and the guitars work on the back end of the song turn up in three or four Death Cab songs over the course of several years. ‘Transatlanticism’ is one of them, and ‘What Sarah Said’ is one of the others. That song is sort of a weird keystone in the influence department.
ES: Good to know, I’ve never heard of that band.
CW: Ben talks about Built to Spill and Teenage Fanclub a lot, but there’s a lot more in there. The way all this stuff glues together, it’s just little bits of things pulled together from different places.
ES: I just love knowing a band’s family tree like that, so thank you for sharing it with me… I wasn’t going to ask you this but how is the loon sound on ‘Lightness’ created? Is it just distortion on a loop or did you have a keyboard or something?
CW: Neither. God it’s a fucking long story. Thomas Organ Company was trying to compete with Hammond in the 60s and 70s. They decided they could probably compete more successfully if they were able to put a Leslie inside of their organ.
ES: I’m so sorry, what is a Leslie? I should know this.
CW: It’s a rotating speaker.
ES: Okay so it’s how you get the cool sound.
CW: Yeah, it’s a physical pitch effect. It’s basically the doppler-effect in a controlled form. The pitch changes as it moves toward and away from you. So anyway Thomas commissioned Leslie to make these modular Leslie units. It’s just a big rotating styrofoam cone over top of a Fender Champ speaker… And they just plug into the back of the organ. So you can actually pull it out of the organ and use it as a speaker cabinet and plug anything into it.
So on ‘Lightness’… The synth we recorded is pretty sub-bass-y. It doesn’t have a ton of conscious note information. It’s a note but it’s way down there. I was basically trying to generate some harmonic content that would give you a better idea of what the changes actually are and how the song works. I landed on the Leslie because there wasn’t a lot of low-end in and it wouldn’t screw up the phase… I got it to a place where it sounded really cool. And that record was done all on tape, so you can’t move [recordings] around. That bass keyboard was on track 11 and track 12 was the only place that was open to record this other thing back into the song. But when I armed and hit record on track 12, because you’re recording out of track 11, there’s a thing that happens with the tape… There wasn’t enough separation between the tracks. There was some kind of interaction between them. It was that feedback that you hear… And it just sounded cool as shit so I ran with it.
It’s just one of those happy accidents. You’re trying to do one thing and something completely different happens. It’s the sort of thing that is difficult to choose or imagine.
ES: I don’t know if you could even recreate that if you wanted to.
CW: And it’s part of the reason why I love making records with hardware. I still enjoy making records on tape when I can… Stuff like that always happens. Like, I could never do that with a [digital] plug-in. It’s some kind of crazy magic.
ES: I don’t want to get into your Plans-era but you signed with a major after Transatlanticism. There was still some money to throw around in those days. I was just wondering if there were any interesting or weird promo materials or merch you made around that time that are buried in the closet somewhere?
CW: The weirdest thing we did during Plans was, our set designer and lighting designer Dan Hadley built two versions of the house that’s featured on the back of the record, and put them on either side of the stage. They were huge. Like 11 feet tall.
ES: I saw you on that tour. I do not remember the houses.
CW: The thing is, by the time it was all said and done, I think only about a third of the venues we played could actually accommodate them because they were so massive. In hindsight, it was a classic stupid major-label thing. It’s a great idea until you actually get it on the ground and try to execute it.
ES: Are those in storage anywhere or have they been disassembled?
CW: Oh, they’re in a landfill.
Chris Walla is a record producer and guitarist. He lives in Trondheim.