The 11th Death Cab album is a rumination on grief, and on the very act of rumination. The first three words Ben Gibbard sings on Death Cab for Cutie’s I Built You a Tower are a plea and a mission statement: “Please forgive me.” The song, “Full of Stars,” is a postmortem of both his marriage and the split itself; he takes accountability for his role in unraveling the relationship, as well as the opportunity to explain. “I tried to mend these broken fences/You claimed I’d built a wall,” he continues. “As if my aim all along/Was to keep you somewhere/You no longer wished to be.” Gibbard may be seeking forgiveness, but I Built You a Tower paints a more complicated portrait: He is working through every stage of grief while also trying to forgive himself, and cannonballing into the most urgent and refreshing music Death Cab for Cutie has written in years. From start to finish, I Built You a Tower underlines how there are no clear heroes and villains in heartbreak, all without reading like a list of grievances. The melodies paired with these emotional excavations swing from euphoric (“The Flavor of Metal,” “Trap Door”) to frantic and discordant (“Punching the Flowers,” “How Heavenly a State”). Disbelief, denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance course through the lyrics, with Gibbard never shying away from them as his mirror. And on the album-closing “I Built You a Tower (b),” he confesses the truth he’s spent the whole album writing towards: “I’m learning how to/Live without you/But these ruminations/Are all about you.” Amidst the pain and devastation, I Built You a Tower manages to hold two things at once: Death Cab for Cutie’s capacity penning for stark, brutally candid songs, and the cathartic joy the indie rock stalwarts clearly feel in playing them.