eath Cab for Cutie’s Forbidden Love EP falls into the category of "Sunday Night Music" - stuff I listen to so that I can unwind before starting another week of school and work. Forbidden Love features dreamy songs about troubled love and car trips. It has two alternate versions of songs from We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes, their prior release to this EP - an acoustic version of "405" and a slightly different "Company Calls Epilogue." Sensitive without being wimpy, Forbidden Love skillfully and successfully wraps its songs in reflection and emotion.


The EP opens with the lo-fi goodness of "Photobooth," which has a beat that sounds like something my little sister and I created on the cheapie keyboard we had as kids. But I don’t mean that in a bad way. "Photobooth" deals with the emptiness vocalist Ben Gibbard feels after misinterpreting the physicality of his summer fling as love. He comes to the harsh realization that "it was hardly love" and that all his sincerity and affection fell upon what turned out to be the uninterested "hard heart" of this girl. The next track, "Technicolor Girls," lulls a little too much, it’s one of those songs that you listen to and keep thinking the music will pick up or do something cool, so you wait the whole three minutes and thirty-eight seconds, but it never really does. The sweeping "Song for Kelly Huckaby" takes the listener along with a couple as they make their way to California. The track, set to drums, guitar, and strings, manages to be both graceful and powerful. Its obsessive description of even the smallest details of the trip makes you feel as if you are right there. "405" is another song with a long drive as its setting. The acoustic guitar brings out the sheer, bitter, prettiness of the song. As he travels to his girlfriend’s parents’ house, the protagonist evaluates his relationship with her. This reflection begins with him saying, "It’s never ever been better than this" but gives way to disappointment and accusations. "You keep twisting the truth / That keeps me thrown askew," he sighs. The layered sound of "Company Calls Epilogue" closes out the EP. Here, Gibbard bitterly medicates himself with alcohol at the wedding reception of the love of his life, a woman who he could never bring himself to confess his love to.


Overall, I totally dig this CD. Granted, it isn’t the most cheerful thing in the whole world, but it’s just right when you need something to mellow you out.