I feel like there's a lot of beauty in the darkness of Narrow Stairs, but that's not really a place I'm ready to go to for a while. I'm interested in taking a different approach and having the next record be different in tone — I'm just not interested in making another dark, dark album.

Death Cab's Ben Gibbard: "The Next Record Will Be Softer" in SPIN magazine (8 October 2008)