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Genius Annotation

Even on a concept album whose main theme is death, “I’ll Follow You Into The Dark” is a standout moving song about the transcendental power of love, even when that boundary is death.

This song was recorded unexpectedly while the band was having technical difficulties in studio. Chris Walla, Death Cab for Cutie’s lead guitarist and producer, said the following.

We were going to track the vocal for another song and there was something screwy happening with the headphone mix. We were having problems, so I said, “Ben, this is gonna be a few minutes. Take a break.” Ben’s version of taking a break while we addressed the headphone problem was to pick up this Stella guitar that he loves and start playing this song we were planning on recording sometime later during the sessions. He was still coming through the vocal mic as he was playing this, and it was sounding really cool to me, so I went up and said, “Let’s track this real quick,” and we did and that’s what’s on the record. It was a mono recording with no effects. Nothing. I added a little compression and de-essed it a bit. It’s really weird. It’s totally there and it’s happening.

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Credits
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Mastering Engineer
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Recorded At
Long View Farm (North Brookfield, Massachusetts)
Release Date
June 26, 2006
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