After declaring in May that a new album was finished, Death Cab For Cutie are in the midst of rolling out Asphalt Meadows, which is set for release on September 16. They released the lead single “Roman Candles” with the announcement, and now they’ve debuted a new song at last night’s show in Newport, Rhode Island.
The tune is called “From Here To Forever,” and it’s jangly and colorful, not unlike their 2005 hit “Soul Meets Body.” At three and a half minutes, it moves at a playful, lively pace and has a texture of hope. It’s not as experimental as “Roman Candles,” which was much darker, reckoning with “the crippling, existential dread that goes hand in hand with living in a nervous city on a dying planet, and that the only way to be in the moment is to let it all go,” Ben Gibbard said upon the release. “The lyrics were cobbled from a couple of different songs dealing with my general sense of anxiety; the feeling that the fabric that weaves a functioning society together was crumbling during the pandemic.” The worry feels absent from this track, focused more on levity.
Watch the band perform “From Here To Forever” above.
Asphalt Meadows is out 9/16 via Atlantic. Pre-order it here.
Death Cab For Cutie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.