Clip for the first 'New Moon' single features light, shadow and plenty of shirtless Robert Pattinson.By James Montgomery





Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard in the "Meet Me on the Equinox" music video

Photo: Atlantic Records




Death Cab for Cutie are very pale. And from the Pacific Northwest. That's seemingly where the similarities between them and Edward Cullen or Bella Swan (or anyone else in the "Twilight" series) end. So when it was announced back in August that their "Meet Me on the Equinox" had been tapped as the first single from the "New Moon" soundtrack, you could almost feel the collective "huh?!?" that arose from Stephenie Meyer's loyal subjects. Death Cab just weren't a "Twilight" band, no matter how translucent Ben Gibbard is.
Of course, all the hand-wringing was premature. Because, as it turns out, Death Cab really are a "Twilight" band (and not just because bassist Nick Harmer has been to Forks, Washington, a bunch of times). They just haven't read any of the books ... or seen any of the films. No, their connection to the series is purely sentimental. Much like Meyer's books, Death Cab are, at their very core, about the ins and outs of love and loss, of the lights and darks of the heart.


And "Equinox" is a perfect primer to Death Cab's entire oeuvre. It's about the unspoken truth of love (and life): that, as Gibbard sings, "Everything ends," and how, despite that fact, we still push onward, we sacrifice, we give of ourselves ... and ultimately, we end up alone. Or dead. Or both. It's a pretty beautiful concept when you think about it. Of course, it's also an incredibly depressing one.
Gibbard gives a nod to that duality by using the metaphor of the equinox, a celestial phenomenon that occurs when the Earth's axis is perfectly aligned with the sun, causing day and night to be exactly the same length. And the video, directed by the team known as Walter Robot (who did DCFC's excellent "Grapevine Fires" video), does it by using the interplay between light and darkness. The clip is a moody time warp, full of shadows that alternately grow and shrink, of sunlight that fills windows, then disappears behind corners. The message — again, like Gibbard says — is that, while time is relative, the end result is the same: Everything ends.
It's as dark and dreary as Forks at midnight, an arty clip about love and death and weighty topics like that. But let's not get too deep here — there's also plenty of shots of shirtless Robert Pattinson, not to mention enough "New Moon" footage to quicken the pulse of even the most moribund of Twilighters. Everything may, in fact, end, but the image of Pattinson's chiseled abs? Well, that's forever. Take that to your grave. And beyond.



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