Just last Tuesday, Seattle-natives Death Cab for Cutie released Codes and Keys, their seventh studio album and arguably best upbeat offering to date.  That may seem like an overly bold statement, but in reality, it’s not.  Death Cab for Cutie is a band that’s made a name for themselves with downbeat gems that tear your soul to shreds.  What did we think would happen when frontman Ben Gibbard finally got married (to Zooey Deschanel at that!) and wasn’t as sad anymore?

As a die-hard Death Cab fan, I’ll be the first to admit my disappointment with the first three singles and horrid “live” music video for “You Are a Tourist”.  I was looking for another Transatlanticism: an album that would deliver one emotionally-stirring ballad after another.  Instead of the guitar and piano-driven tracks found on that album and their 2005 release, Plans, I found a collection of instrumentally diverse tracks and an altered version of Gibbard’s vocals that seemed foreign.

Unlike their past releases, Codes and Keys is an attempt to experiment with an electronically-effected landscape.  Death Cab has strayed from their guitar-based formula, instead turning to these electronic layers to build a depth absent from even their best songs.  Gibbard’s vocals, which at first seemed so strange, quickly grew on me.  Instead of yearning for another “Lack of Color”, I began to savor the rich textures and bellowing vocals of songs like “Some Boys”, “Portable Television”, and “You Are a Tourist”.  This is not the Death Cab for Cutie I listened to in high school.  They’re happy, upbeat, and exciting, terms I wouldn’t generally associate with this band.

“St. Peter’s Cathedral”, though, is the answer to the prayers of Death Cab’s long-time fans.  It’s an epic power ballad that rivals the quality of nearly everything on their previous releases.  Unlike their most well-known ballads, however, it’s driven not by guitar, but crackling keys and electronic percussion.  If there’s one song on this album you’re going to buy, this one’s it.

Codes and Keys is an album that we should have expected from these aging rockers (sorry!).  The indie music scene has been greatly impacted by electronic music (see: Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver), yet unlike most, Death Cab for Cutie has found a way to integrate these elements without sacrificing what makes their style of music so endearing.