Death Cab returns to form

Jason McGerr will be thrilled to be breathing Washington air again.

As the drummer for Death Cab for Cutie, McGerr has been away from his home in Bellingham since the spring, when the band released its newest album, “Kintsugi.” The tour has taken McGerr, singer Ben Gibbard and bass player Nick Harmer from West Coast to East Coast and back again. Wednesday they’re in Missoula. Thursday they come to the INB in Spokane. Then it’s off for a three-night stand at the Paramount Theater in Seattle and a short break before heading to Europe.

The tour has taken them to legendary stops like Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado and the storied Madison Square Garden in New York City.

It’s that latter stop, playing in a room where Led Zeppelin, U2, Bruce Springsteen and the Beatles have trod the stage, that still gives McGerr pause.

“It doesn’t seem like we did that. It was such a blur,” he said in a recent phone interview. “Madison Square Garden sounds amazing. It really is one of the anomaly venues of that size. Normally you get in a place like that and it’s just cavernous, big. You hit your bass drum and you hear it seven seconds later. MSG feels like you’re in a super well-tuned studio or tight rehearsal space. So the dynamics on stage can be really quiet or really explosive. Then with all the lights you see about 30 people in front of you, then you forget where you’re at.”

Death Cab for Cutie, which formed in Bellingham in 1997, has released eight full-length albums, a live record and several EPs. “Kintsugi,” released in March, marked a major turning point. It came nearly four years after 2011’s “Codes and Keys,” and McGerr admits the recording process started nine months too early.

“We had songs – the majority of the songs – ready to go, but when we started out with Chris (Walla, founding guitarist and only producer), we thought we were going to do it the way we’ve always done it, which is he would produce it,” he said. “We were only two weeks into it when we took a short break … when we came back from that break, and Chris said ‘Hey guys, I don’t think I’m the right guy to produce this record.’ ”

That held up recording for a few months as they searched for a new producer. Death Cab finally landed with producer Rich Costey, and Walla headed into the studio to play alongside his bandmates.

“I’m glad Chris made the call not to produce the record because we learned a ton, and I feel like we came away with an album we never would have been able to do had we been doing it the way we’d always done it,” McGerr said. “We needed someone to tell us we could go further and do more and be more challenging and step out of our normal comfort patterns.”

But Walla had other changes in mind, too. After about four weeks, he told the band that “Kintsugi” would be his last record as a member of Death Cab for Cutie.

“We carried on like that wasn’t the case and finished the record with him,” McGerr said. “We didn’t even mention anything to the producer until we were done. … I like that everyone put their best foot forward and we came out with a batch of really meaningful songs in the end.”

Critics have mostly agreed, hailing “Kintsugi” as a return to form for Death Cab. There’s a melancholy tone to the record, as several songs reflect on singer-songwriter Ben Gibbard’s divorce from actress Zooey Deschanel. That, coupled with Walla’s departure, led Rolling Stone to dub “Kintsugi” Death Cab’s “survival record.”

“Death Cab have coped with their losses collectively,” critic Kory Grow wrote, “and emerged with a heart-wrenchingly honest record.”

McGerr said he’s looking forward to sharing that music with fans in Spokane – and revisiting some of the restaurants he discovered on earlier tours. While he’s lived in Seattle in the past, he prefers the pace of Washington’s smaller cities. McGerr is the only band member who still lives in Bellingham. He and his wife are raising their children there. His siblings and extended family are there.

“I love it there. … The air anywhere other than Bellingham feels borrowed,” he said. “Every time I come home, being amongst the trees and lakes and saltwater and Mount Baker and everything, it’s my (style).”