Musiccosmos

I imagine Ben Gibbard circa 1998 situated under a tree reading Kerouac. A sensitive 20-something in sandals and jeans, probably the brainiest of his friend group. Grounded, but reactive. That August, 20 years ago tomorrow, he would release Something About Airplanes with his newly-assembled band Death Cab For Cutie. When I spoke to Gibbard a few months ago on the 10-year anniversary of Death Cab’s sixth studio album Narrow Stairs , I had a different image in my head: a clean-cut Gibbard still glowing from a morning run, his Seattle home soaked in natural light. While Death Cab’s development hinged on the talents of not only Gibbard, but of Chris Walla, Nick Harmer, Nathan Good, and later, Michael Schorr, it is — at its core — a personal project. In the two decades since their debut, the band has evolved with Gibbard as their guide. The Bellingham-dwelling Airplanes -era Gibbard was living and working within a different context than the mid-career Narrow Stairs Gibbard of 2008. Of ...

In 1997, the fourth issue of the Beastie Boys’ Grand Royal magazine included a long profile on a Midwestern rapper named Kid Rock. Kid Rock, we learned, had started the ’90s as a major-label hope and a protege of former Boogie Down Productions member D-Nice. He’d even released a full major-label album, one that attempted to position him as a much hornier version of Vanilla Ice, his white-kid Gumby fade reaching absurd altitudes. It didn’t pan out, and Kid Rock found himself back home in Detroit, dropped from his label. So he reinvented himself. By the time Grand Royal caught up with Kid Rock, he was a local independent-music baron. The Gumby fade was gone. Instead, he grew out his hair and started wearing tracksuits and fur coats. He was rapping, in vaguely Bone Thugsian cadences, about pimping and mushrooms over Smiths and Butthole Surfers samples. He had a live show with dancers and pyrotechnics. He had no real hope of being anything other than a local favorite, but he was going...