Death Cab’s new single is about gentrification

digging for gold in my neighborhood
where all the old buildings stood
and they keep digging it down and down
so that their cars can live underground

If you live in a city that isn’t filled with cranes and construction right now, you probably live in one of the few forgotten ones. Because almost everywhere else you go, there are massive building projects everywhere you look.
Low inflation combined with full employment, cheap money and a demographic handoff to the 73 million-strong millennial generation are the key drivers of this activity. There’s also more institutional money engaged in private investment than we’ve ever seen before, not to mention the foreign capital that is seeking a toehold in the best large economy on earth.

But not everyone is happy with it. The single from Death Cab for Cutie’s album (dropped August 17th) is called ‘Gold Rush’ and it’s about how you walk down the street and see all your landmarks replaced with construction sites. It’s not quite a complaint, more of an observation, complete with the perfectly turned phrases and imagery you expect from all of Ben Gibbard’s stuff. Death Cab comes out of Seattle, which has been utterly transformed over the last decade thanks to all of the Amazon and Microsoft money rolling in, not to mention the new push for urban campuses among leading technology giants.

It’s funny to think about the city that once played host to the grunge movement in rock & roll now being the poster child for radical gentrification.

Amazon has invested $3.7 billion into real estate development in Seattle and in January opened up its new Spheres building, which houses its own rainforest (!) along with cutting edge work environments for its local employees. Frasier and Niles Crane would probably be pushed out of the neighborhood by today’s wealth standards in their home town. Or maybe not – the Seattle Times is reporting that, finally, the building of new apartments had caught up with demand this spring. But…

For many renters, the changes have come far too late. Rents across the region have soared 59 percent since 2011, adding an extra $620 to the average renter’s monthly bill. The average rent for all unit types across both counties is $1,660, and it’s closer to $1,880 in Seattle — among the most expensive in the country.

Songs about gentrification are nothing new, of course…

Fifty years ago, Joni Mitchell was singing about the same thing on ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ – They paved paradise and put up a parking lot. The Kinks did a song called ‘Come Dancing’ in 1982 where Ray Davies sang about the old dance hall his sister used to frequent, which then became a bowling alley, then a supermarket and finally a parking lot.

Interestingly enough, Death Cab actually shot this video in Los Angeles, not Seattle, but LA – like every other big city in America – is going through its own version of what Gibbard is talking about. Lyrics posted below.