Skip to main content

Death Cab for Cutie’s new single ‘Gold Rush’ takes on the rise of Amazon

Death Cab for Cutie - "Gold Rush" (Official Video)

Death Cab for Cutie has a new album, Thank You for Today, coming out on August 17 and the band just released a video for the first single, Gold Rush. The song could prove a cautionary tale for all those cities desperately vying to be the new Amazon headquarters — “be careful what you wish for.”

Recommended Videos

In the video, as singer Ben Gibbard walks down a street filled with shuttered retail establishments, he’s increasingly buffeted by unfamiliar people headed the other way, until he’s drowning in a crowd of oblivious cell-phone users.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Oh, how I feel like a stranger here,
Searching for something that’s disappeared.
They’re digging for gold in my neighborhood,
For what they say is the greater good.
But all I see is a long goodbye,
A requiem for a skyline.

The band, originally from Bellingham, has called Seattle home for years. In an interview with NPR for the All Songs Considered podcast, Gibbard says it’s a song about how his Capitol Hill neighborhood has changed.

“Seattle has been transformed into an almost unrecognizable city over the past 15 to 20 years with the tech boom and specifically with the rise of Amazon and all the other carpet-bagging tech firms that have moved into town to kind of pilfer employees off of Amazon,” he said.

There’s no doubt that Seattle has undergone explosive growth over the past decade, spurred not only by Amazon but also Google, Facebook, and Uber. Geekwire even has a special interactive map to track the engineering centers sprouting up across the area — more than 80 so far (and counting).

As Curbed Seattle points out, observant viewers will recognize that the video wasn’t actually shot in Seattle but rather in Los Angeles. Not many palm trees in the Emerald City.

Gibbard, who’s wanted to write this song for several years, said it’s a rueful lament about losing people and places that make neighborhoods or cities special. “The song is not a complaint about how things were better or anything like that,” he said. “It’s an observation, but more about coming to terms with the passage of time and losing the people and the moments in my life all over again as I walk down a street that is now so unfamiliar.”

“For me what has been the most painful is just seeing the displacement of both people of color and creative communities from not only this neighborhood but the city,” Gibbard added. “Artists and musicians are holding on as well as they can, but it seems like it’s somewhat of a losing battle.”

Mark Austin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Mark’s first encounter with high-tech was a TRS-80. He spent 20 years working for Nintendo and Xbox as a writer and…
What is spatial audio? The 3D sound experience fully explained
Person listening to spatial audio using Apple AirPods Max headphones.

Since Apple added “spatial audio” to the Apple Music streaming service and the AirPods family of wireless earbuds and headphones in 2021, it feels like you can’t read about new audio products or services without running into that term. And just a few short years later, it’s seemingly everywhere.

This has led to a lot of misconceptions about what spatial audio is, how it works, and why you need to hear it for yourself. People often ask, “If Apple created spatial audio, why are other companies claiming they do it, too?” The answer is that Apple didn’t create it, and you certainly don’t need to own its products to experience spatial audio.

Read more
How to download music from SoundCloud on desktop and mobile
Soundcloud Interface on a Macbook.

If you’re a huge music fan, you’ve probably combed through the many playlists, artists, and albums of your Spotify or Apple Music subscription. But what about all the indie artists of the world? Some music-streaming platforms are better than others at celebrating the
‘unsung gem’ acts, but one of the most reliable forums for new, off-the-grid tunes is SoundCloud.

Founded in 2007, SoundCloud has always prioritized music that’s a bit under the radar. With over 320 million tracks in its library, the platform will even let you download a majority of its songs and albums.

Read more
The best kids headphones of 2024: for fun, safety, and sound
Two kids using the Puro Sound PuroQuiet Plus to watch something on a tablet.

Kid-friendly consumer tech is all the rage these days, so it’s no surprise that there’s an entire market of headphones designed exclusively for young ones. But when we think “kid-friendly,” sometimes we imagine products that are built to be a bit more throwaway than their adult counterparts. That’s not the case with the products on our list of the best headphones for kids, though.

We want our child-tailored headphones to include parental-controlled volume limiters, to ensure our children aren’t harming their eardrums. Pretty much every entry on our list checks this vital box, but we also wanted to point you and yours toward products that offer exceptional noise-canceling, built-in mics for phone and video calls, and long-lasting batteries for schooldays or a long flight.

Read more