Harman Patil (Editor)

The Sound of Settling

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Released
  
December 26, 2003

Recorded
  
Spring 2003

Length
  
2:13

Format
  
CD, 7"

Genre
  
Indie rock

Label
  
Fierce Panda

"The Sound of Settling" is a song by indie rock band Death Cab for Cutie, the second single from their fourth studio album, Transatlanticism, released on 26 December 2003. The song reached number 84 on the UK Singles Chart, was featured on various movie soundtracks, and became the third song by the band to be featured on the television show The O.C..

Contents

An acoustic demo for "The Sound of Settling" was featured on the Transatlanticism Demos LP released by Barsuk Records in 2013, to celebrate the ten-year anniversary of Transatlanticism's release.

Development

Written by Ben Gibbard, the song is notable for its upbeat style and the "Bopba" sung during the chorus. Gibbard originally did not like the song, due to his personal distaste of uptempo songs, and had intended to discard it. Despite Gibbard being reluctant to include it on Transatlanticism, guitarist and producer Chris Walla insisted that it be included on the album.

Music video

The video begins with a picture frame containing an image of velvet curtains. When the song starts the camera zooms out from the picture frame mounted on an easel, a scene is performed for a few seconds before the camera zooms out again, and the cycle repeats until the end of the song. These scenes alternate between the band members playing their instruments seriously, and humorous unrelated scenes featuring gospel singers, a drunk man, cheerleaders, an astronaut, chefs, a gingerbread man, as well as the band playing miniature instruments.

The video bears a resemblance to the music video for The New Pornographers' song "Letter from an Occupant".

UK CD Single

  1. "The Sound of Settling"
  2. "Lightness (Live at Studio X)"
  3. "That's Incentive"

Appearances in other media

The song was featured as a free download in the popular video game Tap Tap Revenge 2 from the App Store for the iPhone OS.

It was featured in Season 2 of The O.C., in the twentieth episode "The O.C. Confidential".

the song was also featured on the soundtracks for two movies, Wedding Crashers, and Mean Creek.

References

The Sound of Settling Wikipedia