The Art of Selling Out

If you haven’t heard, Death Cab for Cutie is putting out a remix album called Keys and Codes Remix EP. It consists of songs off their most recent release, Codes and Keys, remixed by the likes of Cut Copy and The 2 Bears. Death Cab has been doing a lot of that the past few years; putting out additional releases to coincide with their proper albums. Narrow Stairs had The Open Door 5 song EP, Plans had the Directions music video album and they also released a tour documentary, Drive Well, Sleep Carefully. Death Cab even provided the lead single to the Twilight: New Moon soundtrack.

It’s this remix album, though, that really threw me for a loop. It seemed so unlike Death Cab that I had to take another look at their recent releases and that’s when it hit me: All of that additional shit listed above came out after they signed with Atlantic. Ding Ding Ding!

The curse of the major label. For all the good they do as far as providing money, high production quality and promotion, they also go way overboard spending unnecessarily, overproducing albums and causing a backlash due to advertising saturation. They believe that fans of a band want to hear and see everything possible that band has created. But sometimes it’s too much. There’s a reason only 12 or so songs are released on albums… the others just aren’t as good. Releasing everything just brings the quality down and skews their body of work.

Of course, I don’t feel this way about Death Cab because they are my favorite band. However, this remix album is different. Codes and Keys didn’t perform as well as expected, meaning Atlantic wants to recoup as much money as possible with as little expense as possible. How about reaching out to a bunch of little known (i.e. inexpensive) up and comers to create their own takes on these songs? They’re Atlantic’s property so it doesn’t cost them to license anything. It’s the perfect plan and yet it’s so ridiculously unnecessary and unlike Death Cab that it sucks having their name attached to such an obvious and transparent moneymaking venture.