Death Cab for Cutie relinquishes control on 'Asphalt Meadows'

XPN | By Stephen Kallao,

Published January 6, 2023 at 10:14 AM CST

Asphalt Meadows is Death Cab for Cutie's most adventurous album in over a decade due in part to an experiment the band tried: Each bandmate had a day to work on a song before handing it off to another member, who could do as they pleased, no strings attached.

In this session, Ben Gibbard and Dave Depper join us to talk about why the result was a resounding success — but probably wouldn't have been if they were all still in their 20s. Plus, how producer John Congleton was the perfect person for the job, and why anniversary shows aren't the cash grab you might think they are.

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Stephen Kallao

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Kimberly Junod

World Cafe senior producer Kimberly Junod has been a part of the World Cafe team since 2001, when she started as the show's first line producer. In 2011 Kimberly launched (and continues to helm) World Cafe's Sense of Place series that includes social media, broadcast and video elements to take listeners across the U.S. and abroad with an intimate look at local music scenes. She was thrilled to be part of the team that received the 2006 ASCAP Deems Taylor Radio Broadcast Award for excellence in music programming. In the time she has spent at World Cafe, Kimberly has produced and edited thousands of interviews and recorded several hundred bands for the program, as well as supervised the show's production staff. She has also taught sound to young women (at Girl's Rock Philly) and adults (as an "Ask an Engineer" at WYNC's Werk It! Women's Podcast Festival).

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