The Forbidden Love E.P.

by

Death Cab for Cutie

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The Forbidden Love EP could have been a few throwaways to keep fans busy until the follow-up to We Have The Facts..., but it's not. It includes "Photobooth," one of Death Cab's best songs. "Photobooth" has become a fan favorite, and rightly so; it's a beautiful indie-pop tune with some gorgeous synths and Ben Gibbard's heartfelt lyrics. "Technicolor Girls" is a nice, but inessential, tune, but "Song For Kelly Huckaby," like "Photobooth," is one of Death Cab's strongest songs. "Song For Kelly Huckaby" indicates the direction Death Cab would take for The Photo Album, as it is one of Death Cab's louder tunes.

The acoustic version of "405" is very pretty, but the alternate take of "Company Calls Epilogue" takes one of the strongest tunes on We Have The Facts and turns it into what sounds like a lo-fi demo. In other words, it's nothing special. Overall, though, "Photobooth" and "Song For Kelly Huckaby" makes the Forbidden Love EP an essential purchase for any Death Cab fan.

At this point, it's nearly impossible to separate Death Cab For Cutie the band from Death Cab For Cutie the almost unbearable hype-generating machine. Not that it's their fault, since it always seemed that the indie community took it squarely upon themselves to declare Death Cab For Cutie the next "it" band, but there was a point last year where it seemed impossible to escape the spectre of We Have The Facts And We're Voting Yes, an album which in all honesty didn't deserve the mountains of press it received. We Have The Facts... was a decent album, but Christopher Walla's murky production and the absence of drummer Nathan Good resulted in what was ultimately a collection of watered down songs which never managed to deliver.

So now we have Death Cab For Cutie's new EP, Forbidden Love. It's a pretty typical offering for the format: three new songs and two reworked ones from the full length. But whereas normally these sorts of releases could be generally ignored by the non-fanatics, there's a real eyebrow-raiser here in "Song For Kelly Huckaby," a song which gets everything right that was botched on the full length. Walla's production is crisp and direct, helping his guitars and Good's drums bring the force and immediacy that was so desperately needed. And for all of the yearning and unrequited love which dominates Walla's songwriting, "Song For Kelly Huckaby" even manages to best everything he's done before. Reminiscence never sounded so good, as Walla avoids much of the acrimony which never rang true on We Have The Facts... Opening with the words "Photographs from the past" could have set "Kelly Huckaby" up as cliche, but every line here perfectly, almost poetically, captures the tangled feelings of regret and retrospection.

The rest of the album is pretty forgettable in comparison. "Photobooth" is good; "Technicolor Girls" isn't. Then there's the acoustic version of "405" and a re-engineered "Company Calls Epilogue," neither of which offers anything really new over the original versions. And there it is. As its own cycle of songs, The Forbidden Love EP isn't anything special, but as a vehicle for the superb "Song For Kelly Huckaby," it's a success.