As Spin reports, Death Cab for Cutie’s new album, Codes and Keys — whose first single, “You Are a Tourist,” is here with us now — is a more self-consciously easygoing album than 2008’s bummer Narrow Stairs. What could have possibly changed between 2008 and now to make Ben Gibbard, Death Cab for Cutie front man and, since 2009, husband to famed actress Zooey Deschanel, happier? Anyway, we’re glad he’s cheered up: “You Are a Tourist” is a frothy, compact banger that skips along, carefree, on a pronounced, bubbly bass line and a moderately squiggly guitar riff. Lyrically, it lands somewhere between Modest Mouse’s “Float On” and Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”: “When there’s a burning in your heart / an endless yearning in your heart,” Gibbard sings, “build it bigger than the sun / let it grow / let it grow / when there’s a burning in your heart / don’t be alarmed.” It’s most certainly the greatest argument for “not overthinking things all the damn time” that we’ve heard this morning.
