Battle of the Bands 11.24.09: Owl City vs. Death Cab for Cutie

Posted by Adam Battagello on 11.24.2009

The sound of Owl City has been heavily influenced by their competition today, but which group has the superior single?

Greetings one and all and welcome to yet another instalment of Battle of the bands. Little bit of an indie music focus after the big names from last week, so without further adieu, let's get rolling.

Before the Blow


Well, who'd of thought that picking a Bon Jovi song over a Pearl Jam one last week would have caused such a furore? Needless to say, despite TRYING to explain in the article why I thought that the two songs were on a comparable level, you can't really avoid the diehard Pearl Jam fans at the end of the day.

And I don't blame them. When it comes to comparing each band on their entire merits, Bon Jovi isn't even in the realm of Pearl Jam, but this was a battle of singles, and I felt that, given the circumstances, Bon Jovi, despite being kind of an afterthought as far as modern music goes, simply pulled out more stops with their single.

And hey, just because something manages to get a bit of play on mainstream radio, doesn't always equate to it being crappy. Just sayin'


Do You Love It?

Anyway, onto the face-off

This Week:
Owl City- Fireflies vs. Death Cab for Cutie- Meet Me on the Equinox




I figured with the whole ‘sparkly vampire' nonsense once again dominating the media, I might as well use it for my own devices, picking ‘Meet Me on the Equinox', the lead single for the film, as one of today's combatants. As shameful as those films may be, Death Cab For Cutie are one of the true institutions of modern indie music, so the single on it's own may well be enough to lift the franchise from its depths.

And for their competition today we have the song ‘Fireflies' from Owl City. Despite being out for a fair bit longer than it's competition, ‘Fireflies' has finally climbed to the top of the popular charts, cementing it as a relatively successful indie single. The band itself has often been compared stylistically to the work of Ben Gibbard, lead singer of Death Cab for Cutie. So how accurate is this comparison? And more importantly, which of today's singles is the stronger offering? Let's find out.

Owl City- Fireflies


Well, what can be said about this release from Owl City? First off, this song is quite simply made to be a radio success, so it has no surprise it has climbed to the second spot on Billboard's hot 100. The melody, the lyrics, the synthpop tune, the beautifully simple string arrangements, every aspect of the track is designed to be inoffensive to the ears, and gather radio play as a result.

This may be a positive for some, but it can also come across as rather monotonous. There is no real abrasion or point in the song where you are completely pulled in; rather it just cruises along for four minutes of rather vanilla pop music.

It's easy to see in this track why Owl City lead singer Adam Young has had to deal with endless comparisons to his competition today. Young's voice is the spitting image of Ben Gibbard, and inspiration for a track such as ‘Fireflies' could have come straight from Gibbard's electro based album ‘Give Up'. Whether or not Young fancies these comparisons, songs such as ‘Fireflies' make it hard to deny.

All in all, a catchy melody, easy listening tune, ‘Fireflies' offers nothing you wouldn't have heard before, but if you can turn your brain off and listen to a song for the sake of serenity, then this might very well be for you.

Moving on!

Death Cab for Cutie- Meet Me on the Equinox



We've covered the group that has been compared to them, now let's take a look at the indie stalwarts themselves and their new single ‘Meet Me on the Equinox.

With the amount of insanity surrounding the Twilight franchise, it was really no wonder that this track was going to be a success. We saw it last year when Paramore's official movie single ‘Decode' essentially launched them into the stratosphere, but to see Death Cab For Cutie, a perennial indie act carrying the pre-teen fantasies of the Twilight fan base on their shoulders here, well it's just weird to think of.

That being said, ‘Meet Me on the Equinox' is, all things considered, a fairly solid showing from the group. Much like its competition today, the track isn't really challenging, and doesn't take much to get your head around lyrically and musically, but then again, the Twilight saga isn't exactly the height of film and literature, so a simple lead single is kind of par for the course here.

Even thought both the lead singer of Owl City and Ben Gibbard do sound VERY similar, and are relatively close in terms of their inspirations, ‘Meet Me On the Equinox' seems to have more bite in terms of vocals. Obviously this comes as a result of ‘Fireflies' being an incredibly laid back song, with ‘Meet Me on the Equinox' being a little more up-tempo, making it, in my honest opinion, more enjoyable.

One aspect I absolutely cannot stand about the track however is the film clip, for reasons, which should be honest. Twilight really is lowest common denominator, and while I understand that some splicing with scenes from the film was necessary for an effective film clip, I feel that this association does somewhat weaken what is a considerably strong effort.

There Can Only be One!

So, today we've had a solid release from indie institution, as well as an immensely popular single from a group who were partially inspired by the former. And today, I have to give the win to the inspirers rather than the inspired. ‘Meet Me on the Equinox', despite the association with those emotional vampires, is undeniably a solid and catchy effort from Death Cab. While ‘Fireflies' definitely has its place, hence its popularity, it was really just too soft for the tastes of yours truly.

Well, that's all from me for this week, what did you think of today's battle?

Until next time, happy battling.