Black Sun Ghosts Of Beverly Drive Title And Registration Death Cab For Cutie

Black Sun Album: Kintsugi (2015)
Ghosts Of Beverly Drive Album: Kintsugi (2015)
Title And Registration Album: Transatlanticism (2003)
by Death Cab For Cutie

Black Sun is the first single from Kintsugi, the melancholy song is likely titled after the Seattle sculpture of the same name by the artist Isamu Noguchi. It has long been speculated that the Soundgarden song "Black Hole Sun" came from the same artwork, but according to their frontman Chris Cornell the origins of the title lie in a phrase he misheard on the news.

Black Sun received its live debut along with "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" and "No Room in Frame" at The Crocodile in Seattle on January 20, 2015, two months prior to the album's release.

Lead guitarist Chris Walla announced that he was leaving Death Cab For Cutie in August 2014, though he continued contributing to the recording and creative process of Kintsugi until the album was complete. The founding member's departure served as an inspiration for the album title. Bassist Nick Harmer, who came up with the record's name, explained to Rolling Stone it's about finding beauty in a breakup: "The album's called Kintsugi," he said. "It's a Japanese style of art where they take fractured, broken ceramics and put them back together with very obvious, real gold. It's making the repair of an object a visual part of its history. That resonated with us as a philosophy, and it connected to a lot of what we were going through, both professionally and personally."

"In the West, if you break an heirloom, you either throw it away or you make the repair as invisible as possible," he continued. "But there's this artistic movement in Japan where the repair of it, the damage of it, is more important as part of the history of something than repairing it to its original state."

"The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" is the second single from their eighth studio album Kintsugi. The driving, uptempo track explores themes of loss in the aftermath of heartbreak. Frontman Ben Gibbard wrote the song after his divorce from actress Zooey Deschanel, and the lyrics of the song directly reference Beverly Hills and what he viewed as its vapid celebrity culture.

Music critics complimented the tune for its hooks and spirit, and "The Ghosts of Beverly Drive" was a radio hit in the United States, reaching the top five on Billboard's rock and alternative rankings. It has been a staple of the band's live performances since its release.

The mournful "Ghosts of Beverly Drive" focuses on the specters of the past. It deals with Gibbard's ill-fated stint living in Los Angeles between 2009 and 2011, and more directly, his marriage and divorce from actress Zooey Deschanel. Gibbard did not specifically suggest the song referenced Deschanel, but conceded it should be "fairly obvious". In the song's chorus, Gibbard finds himself "return[ing] to the scene of these crimes, where the hedgerows slowly wind." In some ways, the song is a spiritual sequel to the band's 2001 song "Why You'd Want to Live Here", also a critique of Hollywood.

Musically, critics interpreted its "muscular" sound as reminiscent of post-punk. Brian Stout from PopMatters compared it to the work of New Order. Electronic pulses and synthesizers take a forefront in the song, part of an increasingly natural textural focus for the band, according to bassist Nick Harmer. To this end, the song was remixed by electronic musician Tycho.

The song's music video was directed by Robert Hales. In the in black and white-shot clip, the members of the band play employees of a celebrity tour bus company in Los Angeles, cruising tourists around the city's ritziest neighborhoods in search of stars. Hales took several star tours as research for the role, and based several moments, such as the scene in which the band are sprayed with a hose, from real moments. James Montgomery at Rolling Stone wrote that the video "explore[s] the sense of separation that's so prevalent in a city like Los Angeles, where societal divides are often as apparent as the ivy-covered walls surrounding a Bel-Air mansion."

This song is about a man who stumbles upon old pictures of his girlfriend ("Souveniers from better times") in his glove compartment before she left him ("Before the gleam of your taillights fading east") and the detached sorrow he has for the relationship leads him to obsess over why it's called the glove compartment, since people don't put their gloves there - they put their title and registration.

Lead singer Ben Gibbard (Rolling Stone, September 22, 2005): "This is a pretty honest portrayal of a real occurrence: I did find an old photo in a glove compartment. When you're not expecting to run into stuff like that, it affects you the most."

Death Cab for Cutie

Benjamin Gibbard – guitar, vocals
Nicholas Harmer – bass guitar
Jason McGerr – drums, percussion
Chris Walla – guitar, keyboard, backing vocals