Video: Teardrop Windows – 
Benjamin Gibbard

With his debut solo album ‘Former Lives’ out next week, November 12th, through City Slang, Death Cab for Cutie front-man Benjamin Gibbard has unveiled his new video for single ‘Teardrop Windows’.

Benjamin is also set to play a very special solo show at Union Chapel on December 3rd. The famously atmospheric London church will see Benjamin perform a selection of material written over the course of his fifteen years in Death Cab for Cutie. He didn’t make his first solo album in search of a new beginning; instead, it closes a door. “These songs span eight years, three relationships, living in two different places, drinking then not drinking” he says of the dozen tracks that comprise ‘Former Lives’. “They’re a side story, not a new chapter.”

The first track from ‘Former Lives’ to make it’s way online, ‘Teardrop Windows’, is about Seattle’s Smith Tower. It began as an unabashed attempt to, in Benjamin’s words, “write a Big Star inspired song,” but quickly morphed into something else entirely. The Smith, built in 1914, was once the jewel of the Seattle skyline but has since been forced out of the frame by the iconic Space Needle and other taller or otherwise attention-grabbing structures. “To me, it represents the things we take for granted when something newer, bigger and flashier comes into our lives,” Benjamin explains.

We think the video is absolutely fantastic. Check it out below.