Death Cab for Cutie’s “The Ice is Growing Thinner”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Death Cab for Cutie’s “The Ice is Growing Thinner”: An Unofficial Slideshow

This is my second DCC slideshow in a week, although I don’t really have plans for creating a page (although I suppose I could let one of my current ones life fallow for awhile, and work on DCC instead).  Like “Long Division,” this is another song from Narrow Stairs, which probably remains my favorite Death Cab album. I’m actually I’m a little surprised I am making this, just because I expected there to be an official video out by now that explored the song’s dual frame of reference. I remember when I first heard it that I admired the way it cleverly used romantic distress as a way of also commenting on ecology, particularly the issue of global warming. However, I seem to be the only person who noticed this, which makes me wonder if the lyrics’ ambiguity is simply a product of my over active imagination. It would certainly be comforting to think so. Perhaps global warming is simply a mass delusion on the part of climate scientists. Again, it would certainly be comforting to so. Unfortunately, things that give us comfort also have great potential to mislead us, all the more so because we want to believe them. Oh well, here’s the slideshow:

Death Cab for Cutie’s “Long Division”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Death Cab for Cutie’s “Long Division”: An Unofficial Slideshow

Like The Divine Comedy’s “Gin-Soaked Boy,” Death Cab for Cutie’s  “Long Division” is a remarkable song that inspired a slide show I am not really sure what to do with. I don’t really want to start up another Facebook fan page (six is enough), although I think Benjamin Gibbard is a very good songwriter, and occasionally brilliant. “Long Division” takes probably the most unpromsing subject possible–the mathematical technique of the title (which I’m not even sure if they still teach)–and uses it as a metaphorical foundation for a probing song about romance and basic human needs and anxieties. After all, who wants to be a remainder of one? Hope someone enjoys it: