Featured Essay: In Defense of Sad Records: My Trip Down the Narrow Stairs

by Noah Goob

I first say “life sucks” and mean it when I’m twelve years old, in the late aughts. I’m too awkward for friends, social media is starting to expose me to the world’s biggest problems, all the adults are sad from the recession, and my own parents are fighting a long and bloody divorce. When I say it, I’m alone in my bedroom, and the silence thereafter feels like the universe agreeing with me.

I want to vent, to rant, to scream, to sob, but I’m too embarrassed. Even when I do, it doesn’t help–they don’t really listen fully, let alone understand. They just placate me with a blanket statement like “life goes on” and half-smile. It makes my blood boil: How could everyone around me act like things were okay, when they clearly weren’t? Couldn’t they see what was going on? Couldn’t they see that the whole world was burning?

One day, in the backseat of my grandmom’s car, I finally feel seen. A shuffling drum beat makes its presence known on the radio–a somber piano chord–then a young man’s voice, singing a slow, mournful melody about a neighborhood engulfed in a fire. Skies looking like the end of days. Alarms warning of impending doom. I was hooked already–but then the chorus rings out: “It’s only a matter of time / Before we all burn”. It holds, with ghostly harmony, on the word “burn”, and takes me to another place, one that I understand.

The minute we get home I rush to the computer and look up the song: “Grapevine Fires” by Death Cab for Cutie. The music video I find depicts the story of the lyrics, with even more tragic scenes than what I envisioned. It is hopeless. It is perfect. 

People would try to ease my sadness by reminding me of all the good things I had in life. And while I do have plenty of good things, unfortunately, my noticing them doesn’t magically stop my sadness. In fact, it makes it worse: I feel not only like I’m sad, but that I’m wrong for feeling sad, which makes me feel sadder, which makes me feel wronger, and so on.

But in the tragic world that the lyrics weave, my irrational feelings make sense. For once, I feel allowed to cry. After a few more listens, I do.

My perception of music is altered forever.

It doesn’t take long after hearing “Grapevine Fires” to discover that there’s actually tons of music like this–now easily accessible on the internet–and most of the stuff I like, the stuff that has poignant lyrics and gorgeous instrumentals that make me actually feel things, files under a genre called “indie rock.” Down the rabbit hole I go, reading posts and comments, devouring album after album, artist after artist, collecting memorized songs like Pokémon in my head: Arcade Fire. Bon Iver. Modest Mouse. Radiohead. And of course, Death Cab for Cutie. Narrow Stairs, and its two acclaimed predecessors, Plans and Transatlanticism, are in my ears for hours a day.

My life still sucks, but I have an outlet. I become an album-listener. I become hungry for more. I am now obsessed with indie rock. 

In the decade that follows, I do a lot of growing up. I go to therapy and take medication. I am in college now, away from the stress of family. Life doesn’t quite suck as much, thankfully. 

My music tastes change and grow, and so does my vinyl collection. It’s not all about indie anymore (and ‘indie’ doesn’t mean as much nowadays). But when I’m encouraged to bring a sentimental item to a college ice-breaker, I bring my vinyl copy of Narrow Stairs, without hesitation, and tell this same story.

And now it’s the present day, and I still find comfort in sad songs. They do make me feel sad, but I enjoy this sadness. (Hence having them on vinyl.)

Sad music gives the negative feelings inside you more space to be expressed than what the world may have to offer at the moment. You are encouraged to keep your composure all the time; nobody likes to see someone broken down crying or erupting with frustration. Social media has complicated it even more, subtly pushing us all to be a little more performative, making us only show our good sides and bottle up the rest. It’s crucial, now more than ever, to be able to have outlets where you truly are permitted to feel everything you need to feel, no matter how ugly. And when neither family nor friends could make that space for me, my sad albums could.

Narrow Stairs also stands out among sad records tonally. It’s not the darkest or saddest album there is by a longshot: Even the band’s more acclaimed predecessor Plans can be said to be sadder, with not one, but two heart-tuggers about loved ones dying. But Narrow Stairs is sad in a way that is unique: where usual somber songs have some silver lining of love or future hope, every single track on Narrow Stairs is hopeless and bleak. Every situation described in frontman Ben Gibbard’s lyrics is either staying bad (like “Bixby Canyon Bridge”, where the narrator hopes for an epiphany that never comes) or getting worse (like “Cath…”, about a doomed marriage). If there is any overarching theme, it’s “no happy endings”. Gibbard himself would have this to say about it in a 2011 interview with the Chicago Tribune:

“[Narrow Stairs] is kind of a fulcrum in my life. So much of the negativity in my life got funneled into it. I realized after that I didn’t want to go any darker. […] I had no grandiose plans to turn my life around.”

I still listen to sad music, and spin sad records on vinyl, and I probably will forever. Narrow Stairs is no longer the saddest record I’ve heard, but it still might be the most hopeless–there are countless types of sadness that music can express, and I’ve found and loved many of them. However, now that I’m not as depressed every day, I don’t exclusively listen to sad music anymore. But when I need it, it’s there for me. Because it makes me comfortable, in a backwards sort of way. If you’re like me in that, and especially if you’ve had a rough time lately, I encourage you to set aside some time this week to spin your saddest record and just feel what comes out–you may need it more than you think. 

It’s okay to cry.

Here is a smorgasbord of albums which I’ve fallen in love with over the years that are heartbroken, grief-stricken, cynical, hopeless, depressed, or just plain sad, if you want somewhere to start.

• The Antlers - Hospice
• Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
• Death Cab for Cutie - Transatlanticism; Plans; Narrow Stairs
• Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs
• Father John Misty - Pure Comedy
• Mount Eerie - A Crow Looked At Me
• The Postal Service - Give Up
• Saba - Care For Me
• Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell; Javelin

Noah Goob is an amateur musician, writer, and music evangelist from the Northeast US. For more of his writing (not always about music), check out his blog. For less of his writing, check him out on social media.