Death Cab for Cutie have come a long way from the days when they were one of the seminal “emo” bands. I remember listening to the Forbidden Love EP when I was a freshman in high school and bawling my eyes out from all the pent-up high school emotions (just kidding, I never did that). Now the phrase “emo” has been bastardized to mean crappy mall-punk, but Death Cab for Cutie still embody the original spirit of the word at their core and many of my favorite songs by the band like “Styrofoam Plates”, “Transatlanticism”, and now “Grapevine Fires” are the ones that tend to do a lot of tugging at your heartstrings.
The emotion that are already present in the lyrics are brought to the forefront for this video, and the result is a stunning blend of poignant storytelling and technical achievement with the storybook-like animations. The video takes the lyric “it’s a matter of time, before we all burn” literally and shows us a suburban neighborhood being engulfed by a wildfire. I won’t ruin the video for you, but not everyone makes it out alive and we see the characters deal with mourning and loss in a beautiful way. It’s heavy stuff for an animated music video, but the subject matter is dealt with such grace and tenderness that it’s hard not be moved on an emotional level (especially when you relate it to real-life instances like the recent fires in Australia). Grab your tissues for this one, folks.
