Thursday, April 7, 2011

Bands That Suck Balls: DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE


Last week I had some fun on this feature in doing an April Fool's day BTSB post on legendary rock pioneer's The Beatles. Funny enough, the only feedback I've received so far has been positive commentary regarding the Beatles indeed being an overrated band. Perhaps the haters of this blog that love The Beatles got halfway through the post before hurling their computer out the window and missing the chance to tell me I have "basically the worst opinions ever." Or they are so infuriated by it that they are waiting to gather themselves, formulate coherent thoughts, and concoct the perfect angry anonymous comment to ridicule my opinions and notify that one slapdick I've never met no longer likes me. We shall see. Anyways, I can't afford to waste two consecutive weeks in my quest to abolish shitty music, and bring back Rad bands, so this week we return logically to the world of dipshit modern rock & roll. This week's entry is another band that I knew absolutely had to suck balls, but I never had the courage to listen to. I mean it's risky for me to sample modern rock jams, you never know when I might find that one horrendous band that makes me finally go postal or just completely give up on music due to their unprecedented shittyness. I survived another week of sucky band research but I have to say it was quite the ordeal forcing myself to check out this week's Band That Sucks Balls: DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE.


Ok. Lets get one thing out of the way immediately. Forget what made up genre this band may fit into. Forget that they may look like a collection of complete douchebags. Don't even think about how horrible their music is. Just...LOOK at the name of this fucking band. "Death Cab...For Cutie." No wait seriously...read that back. The band is named "DEATH CAB...FOR CUTIE." I mean are you absolutely fucking kidding me?!= What in the hell kind of name is that for a rock band? Death Cab for Cutie sounds like a line of teen girl products/apparel from Hello Kitty sold exclusively at Hot Topic. Under no circumstance can you ever use the word "cutie" in naming your rock band. If these assholes had named their band "The Rose Scented Tampons" it would sound more badass than "Death Cab for Cutie." Good lord. Of course you would have to assume that any band that names themselves using the terms "death" and "cutie" in conjunction is probably the biggest set of weepy pussys to ever set foot on a rock stage. You my friend would indeed be correct.


Check out this amazing collection of nancy boys above. If not for the skinny jeans and hiked up corduroys you would think these douche monkeys were tenured college professors in the English department, meeting to discuss the inclusion of more Jane Austen works in next semester's curriculum. We meet most of our general indie rock requirements here. Guy on the right fills the "asshole with non-presciption retro eyewear" position, while guy on the far left is in the role of "bearded douche." Both fucktards are obviously wearing old man sweaters. The guys in the middle of course must counter with old style blazers and side part combover hairstyles to make sure the band meets all requirements for a feature story in "Stereogum" or "Pitchfork" magazine. I have no idea what indie bands do when they are forced to perform in the sweltering Texas heat during their inevitable set at SXSW or Austin City Limits, since they all wear sweaters, blazers and pea coats and often hail from the rainy Pacific Northwest. Anyways some artsy hipster label managed to overlook the fact that they're missing an ugly Asian girl or busted chick with bangs and gave the pansy parade a record deal anyways. Lets take a listen shall we?




Jesus Christ. Remember when rock videos incorporated hot chicks, summer weather, and themes of general "fun"..? Now we have...this. Video (A) - lead singer PansyCakes McVag is alone in his attic on an overcast afternoon curled up in a ball on his bed plucking an acoustic guitar. Singing some sad stalker anthem in a weepy tone about following his distant love..into the dark. Then we get some rad imagery incorporated into the clips as a dark hole in the center of his room {kinda like the one in the center of heart :( } Then the clip ends with no sign of the ugly bitch with bangs and a scarf he is following into the dark. Well now that we know the lead singer is a sissy lets examine what exactly the role of the rest of the band is. Video (B) -




Oh good. They do nothing. Looking at the video you'd be led to believe this band has a lead guitarist and a bassist who rock out while swaying back and forth. Then you realize...there is no guitar...or bass audible at any point in this song. No the song is dominated by some downer emo piano and a soft repetitive drum beat (I counted one 3 second drum fill a few minutes in). Apparently the guitarist and bassist are just there because they needed two more guys bundled up in scarves and winter stocking caps on stage to present the appearance of a full indie rock band lineup. The song is of course again about some girl the whiney singer longs for, and how he hopes to .."possess her heart." Clearly telling this broad he's fallen for "Gimme all your loving..all your hugs and kisses too" or mentioning that he "just wants a piece of her custard pie" would be crazy. This isn't rock & roll or anything, just amateur poetry night at the student lounge with accompanying acoustic guitar and piano. Every Death Cab song is like the soundtrack to that point in any chick flick where the guy and girl fight and break up and we get a montage of them staring out various windows with a lonely expression of regret. Except there is never a "happy ending" in this story (unless you count the one the drummer gives the lead singer after they spend another evening weeping into each other's scarves in the attic).


Anyways, there's no point on dwelling on how lame the Cutie Death Patrol is, even though I could probably rant for five more paragraphs. They totally suck balls, and if you relate to their music I suggest you move to a rainier climate where you'll have plenty of opportunities to stay inside and brood while listening to acoustic piano pussy rock about your heart. Or you could just blow your head off in an attic. Either one works for me.


Rather than end on an angry downer note I wanted to share some joyous news with the masses. This week a victory was scored for rad rock fans everywhere when legendary hipster fucktards LCD Soundsystem: http://getoffmylawnkid.blogspot.com/2011/01/bands-that-suck-balls-lcd-soundsystem.html called it quits and put us out of our misery by playing their final epic electro dance noise rock show in Madison Square Garden to a sellout crowd of hopping hipsters. Never again will we have to hear their enthralling combination of blips, beeps, synthesizers and talk-singing again. Thank..GOD. For once it wasn't an awesome band that decided to give up the dream. So to LCD Soundsytem we bid you adieu. Listening to hipsters rave about the merits of your whiteboy dance rock and seeing you hop around and press buttons onstage has been...not fun at all. So see you later fucktards. You will not be missed. For those of you keeping score at home that's 1 Band That Sucks Balls down...and about 1,567,890,543 bands to go.

7 comments:

  1. Yeah...Death Cab For Cutie. WTF kind of a name is that? Say no more, I already know they're a wiener band. We need more death cabs for wieners.

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  2. Come off it! Death Cab for Cutie is an awesome phrase (although, admittedly, a strange band name at best)!! It's the title of a Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band song...which is WAY better than anything these hacks will likely do.
    But the Bonzos will always ROCK.

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  3. meh
    Just like you, I never checked out Death-Cab-For-Cutie, because the name is just that bad. Now I've heard two songs by them, the first of which just blows, the second kinda rocks. Not in a musical sense, the instrumentation doesn't really rock (although it clearly has audible bass and guitar and the overall effect of it strikes me as laidback) but with the message: he's basically telling this chick he's okay if you get over the fact he looks like one of those guys from revenge of the nerds in winterwear his mom handknitted for him. Which shows he got balls for a nerd, because most people who look like that don't talk to chicks they have the hots for, because they're afraid of the ridicule. All I'm saying is, this band doesn't seem to suck as much balls as dashboard confessional for example, which I knew I was gonna hate from the moment I saw that little kid in the music video (the one you linked to)

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  4. I completely agree that they suck major cock, but your reasoning is complete bullshit. You shouldn't judge a band completely on their appearance. Sure, it makes an impact, but it should not be your only argument against them.

    Call me crazy, but I prefer to judge bands by their music.

    In the first video you showed us, you failed to mention their pathetic writing. Using the exact same chords that every puke brained emo/country/pop/shitty band uses, they managed to bore the daylights out of the sun. The reason music is sucking more and more ass these days is because they are satisfied with I-IV-V, and even worse, I-V, with the occasional iv or vi.

    In the second video, you again managed to leave out the dull repetitiveness of their "music". They came up with a decent base line, and proceeded to play a 7 minute song with literally that same line playing through the entire thing. That brings up another point: they wrote a 7 minute song, with no dynamics, changes in melody, or any such interesting feature. I, to this day, have never listened to the full-length intro, because of how boring and unchanging it is.

    Although I agree with everything you said, your post here could be compared to those who hate President Obama just because he's black. They could have argued, "His socialist approach is not right for this country", but instead they just said, "He's black!" Your ignorant and pathetic attempt at persuading readers of your viewpoint was horrendous, and from reading your post, the only thing I have learned is that you have no musical knowledge or sense of quality.

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  6. I found this blog post today after a Death Cab for Cutie Song momentarily invaded my Ben Folds channel on Pandora. (Until I could thumb it down so it would never return.) ... I'd forgotten how gawdawful this band was.

    Before I'd ever really heard any of the band's songs, I was hired to work concert security at a Death Cab show in Duke University's Cameron Indoor Stadium. The opening acts were a halfway-decent three-man punk band from the U.K. (I forget the name) and Franz Ferdinand -- who rocked. ... Time flew by, especially during Franz Ferdinand's set. When they wound up their last song, I was left wishing for more. ... But, good band is offstage. Show's over, right?

    No, there will be Death Cab. For God knows how long.

    Seriously, for the duration of the Death Cab set, I kept checking the time. As each song droned on, I would pull the cell phone from my pocket, look at the clock, and think "Jesus CHRIST! It's only three minutes later? ... OH MY GOD! It's only been FOUR minutes since the last time I checked the time?"

    Now, my job -- along with another new hire of similar size and starkly different complexion -- was to stand at one corner of the stage front, in a gap between the speaker tower and a waist-high retaining fence intended to keep fans from rushing the stage. ... If a charge began, we were told, just do our best to hold them back and help would come.

    From my first look at the crowd, I thought any concerns about a stage-rush were ill-founded. By the time Death Cab had played one song, I was wishing someone would rush the stage just to make things interesting or even to make it stop. ... Death Cab fans. Fans of actual music. Hell's Angels. I didn't care. ... But I knew it wouldn't happen, because even the college boys in the crowd were one of three kinds: Those who were into the music as much as the girls, those who knew that sitting through Death Cab with their girlfriend would earn them a little extra-special something after the show, and those who were going to be committing suicide from a dorm window at 2 a.m. because even enduring 90 minutes of waterboarding by Death Cab wasn't enough to get them laid by that pretentious little bitch.

    Then came the encore: "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." And I thought, "You know ... if that song were sung by ANYBODY else ... ANYbody with actual talent, emotion, personality ..."

    And in 2008, it was. Amanda Palmer released a cover of "I WIll Follow You Into the Dark" with the alternate tracks of "Who Killed Amanda Palmer." She'd apparently heard the track on an unlabeled mix-CD swiped from some cafe in Hawaii, not knowing who the band even was. (Which, she says, was good.) ... When she went into the studio with Ben Folds in Nashville, she asked to record a cover and nailed it in two takes.

    http://music.amandapalmer.net/track/i-will-follow-you-into-the-dark

    So there's the only Death Cab song I find listenable, and then only when somebody else performs it.

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  7. I was accidentally exposted to Death Cab for My Mother today while cruising thru random Spotify collections.”Broken Teeth” was a fun song about ending up in a meth head’s house with someone you’d been sleeping with who you never liked. So I went looking for more Death. Jesus H Christ, every single song I listened to (about ten) ,unlike “Broken Teeth”, was awful.Despite the fact they are lonely guys who nobody understands because they’re so sensitive, every song I listened to after”Broken Teeth” - all bad, all cringey and all……Cutie. So I did a search “Why did Death Cab for Cutie suck so badly” and I was led to this blog.
    Thank you for making me LOL, when I very rarely even L.I’m off to read more of your horrible bands write ups. I’m hopeful they’ll be as wonderfully extremely funny and to the point as the one above for Death Cab for My Aunt Mimi.Thank you for letting me laugh and love again.

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