Death Cab for Cutie Comes to Miami With a New Album and Mounds of Coffee

Seattle and Miami are at the polar opposite corners of the country. No wonder it’s been a couple of years since the beloved Seattle rock outfit Death Cab for Cutie has ventured to the Magic City.

It’s time for that sad streak to end. With a new album under its belt and a lot of coffee on the tour bus, Death Cab will stop at the Fillmore Miami Beach Monday, October 22.

“We’ve always had really great shows in Florida... It’s just one of those places where if the fans weren’t so vocal, excited, and enthusiastic, it would be easy for us to avoid altogether,” longtime bassist Nick Harmer says. “But here we come.”

For the Miami shindig, count on a hearty serving of new stuff mixed with some classics. The band’s timeless faves date back 20 years and include “Soul Meets Body,” “Title and Registration,” and “The Ghosts of Beverly Drive.” The new stuff comes from the band's latest LP, Thank You for Today, which dropped in August, peaked at number one on the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart, and boasts the increasingly popular single “Gold Rush.”

“This is the first album we’ve ever made where we’re playing every single song from the new record on a tour,” Harmer says. “We’re not playing every song every night — we’re spreading them out throughout the tour — but we really like it.”
A big chunk of the reason Harmer and company love the new album is the band's newest members — guitarist Dave Depper and keyboardist Zac Rae — who both officially joined Death Cab in 2016.

“There’s just a ton of new musical ideas and energy that happened in the studio that we hadn’t had in the history of our band,” Harmer says. “It all started with [lead singer Ben Gibbard] spending time in his writing room until there was enough material to start recording an album. In this case, he came to us with 30 demos... and we eventually whittled it down to ten songs.”

In addition to the new bandmates fueling Death Cab's creative energy, there’s coffee too. They're from Seattle — what else would you expect?

“[Coffee] is extremely important,” Harmer laughs. “I will say for the record that we are not coffee snobs. If we’re in a jam and at a truck stop, that’s the stuff you get. But if we have a choice in the matter and if we are allowed to get it right, yeah, we have our preferences. On our bus, we have four ways to brew the coffee, we have beans from Denmark and Washington... and we have four different grinders. We do like a good cup of coffee.”

Death Cab for Cutie. With Charly Bliss. 7 p.m. Monday, October 22, at the Fillmore, 1700 Washington Ave., Miami Beach; 305-673-7300; fillmoremb.com. Tickets cost $42 via livenation.com.