Death Cab For Cutie frontman and recent Westboro Baptist Church target Ben Gibbard will be releasing a solo record, his first. Former Lives is due out Oct. 16 on Barsuk, and will contain 12 songs Gibbard’s written and recorded over the past eight years. That includes a few reworked versions of songs he’s performed live before, whether on tour with Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt’s Jay Farrar in 2009, or all by his lonesome in 2007. He’ll tour a little bit around this record, but no dates have been released.
Former Lives was recorded by Earlimart’s Aaron Espinoza and, according to an interview Gibbard gave Stereogum, isn’t necessarily something he always wanted to do, but that doesn’t mean that the tracks are junk. As he puts it, “They’re not songs that weren’t good enough to make Death Cab records as much as they were things that … well, there’s not really place on a Death Cab record for a song that sounds like Big Star or Teenage Fanclub.” One song reportedly has a mariachi band and at least one of them is acoustic, but none feature Dntel, reminding the world once again that it’s just never going to get that Postal Service reunion.