Music: Great heights for Death Cab

Death Cab for Cutie drummer Jason McGerr is a happy man. His band's new album, "Narrow Stairs," its seventh, had just debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 last week. In the world of indie rock, sincere pleasure -- especially regarding commercial success -- can be a death knell, but McGerr is refreshingly honest about the milestone.

"I'm smiling right now. I had to pinch myself," he said, on the phone from Death Cab's home state of Oregon. Though, he admits, "I honestly haven't had time to register it at all. It'll probably be more monumental in retrospect."

"Narrow Stairs," after 2005's "Plans," is the band's second album for Atlantic Records. It's also Death Cab for Cutie's best to date, combining all of the band's strengths -- dreamy abstraction, forlorn lyrics, concise pop songcraft -- into a melodic, expertly produced record.

McGerr said the band's new approach in the studio -- very few overdubs, recording onto tape instead of digitally -- is what made the disc successful.

"It really was a relief," he said. "It's not me sitting behind glass playing drums, trying to read lips from my three bandmates, discussing whether or not my parts sound good. You can get beautifully distracted when everyone's playing all together, and you can get horribly caught up when you're playing by yourself."

McGerr, interviewed on the first day of the band's "Narrow Stairs" tour (which stops at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis on Monday), was noticeably excited about playing the new songs live. In arranging the songs, McGerr and bassist Nick Harmer tried for a Stax Records feel, which lends the catchy "No Sunlight" and hard-rocking "Long Division" a satisfying concision. This tightness also gives the rest of the band some breathing room, resulting in some stunning work from guitarist Chris Walla and guitarist/lead singer Ben Gibbard.

These new songs are also surprisingly poppy. "No Sunlight" features some Beatlesque turnarounds, and on the sublime "You Can Do Better Than Me," the band channels Brian Wilson. ("Ben had this idea of really going 'Pet Sounds' with it," said McGerr, "and Chris heard it [that way] before he even said it.")

"Plans" was the first major-label record that Walla -- also the band's longtime producer -- had produced. He has since helmed the Decemberists' "The Crane Wife" on Capitol, and Tegan and Sara's "The Con" on Warner Bros. This time around, Walla got to relax and focus more on playing guitar.

Despite Death Cab's newfound focus, McGerr said the recent Billboard achievement ups the ante. "It just means we've got to work harder, in my opinion," he said. "If you're a sports team, and you're going up against the world champion Red Sox or whatever, you need to step it up. You have to own that and live up to your reputation."

Lately the band has been busy with unconventional promotions, such as playing "Call of Duty 4" interactively with fans and taking over music blog Stereogum for a day. "Everyone needs content these days," McGerr explained. "There's iTunes sessions, AOL sessions, MySpace. ... To alleviate a lot of these requests, we've tried to do some stuff to make it more fun."

"Fun" isn't a word that people usually associate with Death Cab for Cutie, but parts of "Narrow Stairs" are a downright blast. The record is as loose and sure-footed as "Plans" is cautious, a progression McGerr clearly relishes. He references a bunch of Atlantic alumni as particular inspiration.

"When you listen to old Zeppelin records, you hear Jimmy Page trying to pull out a guitar solo, and he barely pulls it out. You're waiting for him to fall off the rails, but he just barely pulls it together at the end. Every time I go back to a record and hear things like that, I hear a human being. Which puts a smile on my face."

Maybe not. Maybe it's simply a bunch of people doing what they love, for an ever-growing audience that loves what they do.