Watching The OC as an adolescent was crucial for my then-developing taste for indie music. I was turned onto so much good stuff at the time, some of which I no longer listen to, some of which I will never stop listening to. The early 2000s were a veritable golden age for guitar driven indie rock, and listening to certain bands now soaks my brain in nostalgia and takes me back to a time when everything I was listening to was novel.

However, listening to new Death Cab For Cutie in 2015 doesn’t teleport me back in time–and I certainly don’t think that they would want it to. After enduring a lot of personal turmoil and bidding farewell to longtime band member, Chris Walla, Ben Gibbard has a lot of incentive to focus on the present and use his art to propel him onward. Sure there is self-doubt in the somberly titled “The Ghosts Of Beverly Drive”, but that is to be expected in any new artistic or life phase. Being comfortable is great, but it can also be very boring. Those liminal moments between stages are crucial–they set the tone for how you will enter the next era of your life. That is why i love the key lyric of this track: “I don’t know why I don’t know why.” It is uncertainty boiled down to its essence–but it’s not necessarily foreboding or negative. There is room to grow–you may ultimately never know why you don’t know something, but you might at least figure out why it is you don’t. Oh man I feel those vintage Death Cab feel afterall, huh?

When you’re done listening to the track, make sure you tune into our most recent Nerdist Podcast with Death Cab frontman, Ben Gibbard.