Isn't it emo? No, dammit! No! Find out what the Pacific Northwest's favorite new bearers of the indie pop torch have brewed up on their Fall '01 release.

Death Cab for Cutie, they're what you might call a lo-fi indie rock band. They play sugary, sleepy, catchy music, put on a good show, and have quality lyrics. What else is new? Well, they're on a tiny, tiny label (Barsuk), lead singer Ben Gibbard has a pretty falsetto and writes inventively (musically and lyrically), and they manage to please without disturbing anyone at all. It's indie-rebel lite, but that doesn't make it bad. Not at all.

On The Photo Album, DCFC both slow things down more and speed them up as well. Gibbard continues to spout wonderful stream-of-consciousness Gen-X'er lyrics ("The workadays were propping the bar quietly / erasing the week / and i was in a corner booth thinking / (pretending to read) about the impossibility of one to love unconditionally / and the words that we drive into the ground..." It rolls very well. The band rolls and swells and dissipates over the album. In comparision to the rest of Death Cab's earlier works, The Photo Album is a little further away from the sleepy center the band established on "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes" and "Something About Airplanes". The former album's "Company Calls" has many counterparts here in its faster tempo and clearer beat.

After a slow, practically percussionless starter (Steadier Footing), which I'd go so far as to call an unwise first track, the band put forth a string of great songs - the catchy, existentialist "A Movie Script Ending", 'experimental' "We Laugh Indoors" (which showcases some of Michael Schorr's most noticeable drumming), and the poppy, quasi-depressing anti-Los Angeles song "Why You'd Want to Live Here." Mentionable as well is the haunting "Information Travels Faster".

Track by track? The album doesn't play as such, and shouldn't be described this way. It's nice, it's relaxing, it's catchy and solid. It's worth your money, especially if you get the limited edition w/ 3 bonus tracks from Barsuk, including a quality cover of Bjork's "All is Full of Love". So why not lose yourself a little indie stress? For fans of sparkly emo bands and Polyvinyl records, this could be the album that rescues you from another night of crying in the dark to Braid.