Death Cab for Cutie are hoping to play at next year's Big Day Out.

A major move was a minimum of fuss, writes Andrew Murfett.

FOR an independent rock band, the move to a major label can be fraught but few acts have made the transition more comfortably than Seattle’s Death Cab for Cutie.

The rock quartet waited patiently to make the jump until the release of their sixth album, 2005’s Plans. Three years on, Plans is the virtual blueprint for crossing over. They kept their indie label involved, giving them the rights to release Plans on vinyl. They produced an album superior to their previous work. They sold significantly more without alienating their diehard fan base. Well, not too much.

Sure, it was a little slicker, but it was the same band doing roughly the same thing they always have.

The record has shifted a remarkable 950,000 copies and almost every track has been licensed.

“It’s a strangle little miracle that each of our records has done better than the previous one,” producer and guitarist Chris Walla says. “But we know that it’s a streak that could come to an end with this one.”

DCFC’s melancholic seventh album Narrow Stairs arrives this week as the band struggle with the transition to headline-act status at major festivals.

“It’s a weird thing to get used to,” Walla says. “And it’s been awkward. The training ground is the actual festival. You don’t know how it’s going to go until you’re outside in the sun, onstage, staring at 50,000 people. We probably blew it a few times at festivals, did some awkward things that didn’t work. We’ve had the most success by just making ourselves comfortable.”

Work began on the record late last year in drummer Jason McGerr’s studio. Vocalist Ben Gibbard, chief songwriter, brought 30 tracks to the studio, which they whittled down to 11.

The album was completed in February and DCFC swiftly tossed fans a curveball one month later when they leaked the album’s first single, I Will Possess Your Heart, an epic 8½-minute track. The reaction was swift. And polarising.

“I doubt it will be the most popular song on the record,” Walla says. “But it’s the perfect calling card. And it’s a song that is difficult to be ambivalent about.”

Walla, who, as the band’s producer, is a studio obsessive, says the band have taken risks and done a lot of things they would would never normally do in the studio. “It was fun to crank it up and make a mess,” he says.

Tellingly, while Plans was ostensibly dark thematically, it possessed a definite pop sheen. Narrow Stairs, however, is seemingly bleaker and probably a little less accessible. It’s a risk, but one the band refuses to admit concerns them.

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