Death Cab For Cutie’s “Plans was, in my opinion, an unexpected success. The album was focused, rich, and representative of the band’s body of work without feeling redundant. For me, it fully cemented the band as an artist that consistently puts out good records, major label or not, and following “Transatlanticism” with something as strong as “Plans” was impressive. My hipper than thou friends reluctantly conceded to its success as somewhat of an anomaly, because supposedly, while I tend to disagree, indie music through major label filters tends to stifle creativity and water down innovation. But Death Cab For Cutie has seemed to transcend this folly, which brings us to “Directions.” This companion DVD to “Plans” is not only a “beautiful experiment,” as explained by Chris Walla on the disc’s introduction, but is a fantastic collection of short films that stand alone as wonderful pieces of art while giving new and a fresh interpretation of an album full of lovely music.
I don’t want to dissect each of the films individually but there are clear standouts on the disc and definitely weaker portions as well. The DVD starts out on an earnest but feeble first step with Paul Brown’s interpretation of “Marching Bands of Manhattan” and Cat Solen’s “Soul Meets Body.” Brown’s concept is a tad overzealous and it’s rather clumsy in its execution and Solen’s concept is good, but loses character with its redundancy. This will probably faze you if you aren’t patient, but be vigilant because the rest of the disc is really quite impressive. There is a striking film for “What Sarah Said” by Laurent Briet and a wonderful visual carnival by Josh Victor Rothstein for “Brothers on a Hotel Bed” that are ambitious but simple, leaving the underlying theme exposed and beautiful. “Your Heart is an Empty Room” captures a broken heart about as perfectly as one can imagine, and “Stable Song” creates an entirely separate reality through a very interesting short film about a girl and her two brothers in an underground bunker to close off the disc. The bands objective of having an alternate way of listening to the album by throwing the DVD on is fresh and exciting, but don’t expect to just listen, because most of these films leave you captivated.
While I am impressed and satisfied with most of the films on the DVD, it is truly the concept and ambition that carry this DVD through to being so successful. While this certainly isn’t the first album to be put to film, it is, however, the first of its kind with independent filmmakers having the freedom to create pieces of art based on no direction whatsoever. The freedom is inspiring, the films are inspiring, the music is inspiring, and the hope that artists everywhere will be inspired too is its greatest testament. |