Released as part of Death Cab for Cutie’s Plans on Aug. 30, 2005, “Summer Skin” was a remarkably intuitive song, full of very adult emotion and haunting insight from a band with such a frankly ridiculous name.
In fact, this track might just be all the more powerful for the lowered expectations that come from a group actually called Death Cab for Cutie. I don’t care if they were a staple on the soundtrack to the popular teen drama The O.C. I hate the name. But, with just that much conviction, I love this tune.
The narrative begins as a series of mid-year childhood delights are recalled through Ben Gibbard’s delicately constructed lyrics. But from those stimulating, if safe, environs (peeling sunburns, squeaky swings, tall grass and warm friendship) grows a complex realization about the passage of time, and the changing of hearts over that time.
“I don’t recall a single care,” Gibbard sings in a fragile, almost elliptical falsetto, “just greenery and humid air. Then Labor Day came and went, and we shed what was left of our summer skin.”
There is, by the track’s end, a sweetly recalled memory – one of timeless innocence, but also a mature melancholy. This is a story told from an adult vista. “Summer Skin” is keenly aware that seasons change. It’s a song about youth, but really it’s all about growing up.
Years later, “Sumer Skin” still packs a dense wallop. The melodic yet staccato sound bed works as another counterpoint – and a still deeper dimension: This little-drummer-boy beat propels this track, but a sinewy bass line and elegiac piano signature actually accomplish the more emotional punctuation.
That provides conflict to match the subject – and is in keeping with the style of, say, the best Lennon/McCartney collaborations. Later, I decided that its tone reminded me of the best of 1970s-era Elton John. Meaningful and idiosyncratic, Death Cab for Cutie’s “Summer Skin” is timeless in that way.
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