Death Clapback for Cutie? Ben Gibbard takes a different path on new album, 'I Built You a Tower'

In 2023, Ben Gibbard marked the double 20th anniversaries of the Death Cab for Cutie album Transatlanticism and The Postal Service's Give Up. But as he was celebrating the past, Gibbard's present and and future were changing as he went through a divorce, an experience that became the bedrock of Death Cab's new album, I Built You a Tower.

"Going through a separation and divorce, it's very difficult and painful," Gibbard tells ABC Audio. "I don't recommend it."

This isn't the first time Gibbard has used a Death Cab album to sort through a separation. The band's 2015 album, Kintsugi, was similarly released following Gibbard's high-profile split from actress Zooey Deschanel.

Gibbard describes Kintsugi as a "rather bitter album" — take lead single "Black Sun," in which he sings, "How could something so fair be so cruel?"

"There are certainly songs on [Kintsugi] that I really like, but I wouldn't make it again," he says.

In contrast to Kinstsugi, Gibbard endeavored to focus inward on I Built You a Tower instead of lashing out.

"There is the whole fleet of emotions when you go through ... a divorce," Gibbard says. "But at the same time ... I didn't want to lean into bitterness or anger, I just wanted to kind of exist with the internal experience of it."

"I found there was more to kind of unpack in the internal experience of that," he continues. "Rather than ... writing something that, at almost 50, that would be perceived as, like, a 'clapback' record."

I Built You a Tower is out now. It includes the lead single "Riptides."

Death Cab for Cutie will launch a U.S. tour in support of I Built You a Tower in July.