Nick Harmer

Early in the pandemic, Death Cab for Cutie‘s Ben Gibbard seemed to be ahead of the curve. In March, he launched a solo performance stream, Live From Home, helping blueprint a detour for musicians swept off the road. But with the camera switched off, he was just as confused as anyone else — and it took him a while to find his artistic footing. “The first couple months, especially when I was doing the livestreams — well, we all were there. There was this feeling of, ‘This is gonna last a month, and then we’ll get back to real life,’” Gibbard tells SPIN. “Then there was the panic of every day: ‘You can’t touch this; don’t do that; you’ll die if you do that.’ With the amount of anxiety, and also the thought that this would be a short-term thing, I did hardly any writing.” There were a lo...