So what do you do for buzz when you’re no longer an indie darling championed by characters on hot TV shows but rather just another veteran band on a major label? If you’re Death Cab For Cutie, you release a first single with a five-minute instrumental opening in prelude to lyrics that probably would merit a restraining order if produced as evidence by whomever they’re addressing.

“I Will Possess Your Heart” certainly joins the list of great stalker anthems like “Every Breath You Take” by The Police or “I Want You” by Elvis Costello, as Death Cab leader Ben Gibbard spits out the word “love” as if he’s using air quotes. Coming off of “I Will Follow You Into The Dark” from 2005’s Plans, it certainly establishes Gibbard as the go-to guy for in-depth forays into the dark side of love.

Where Plans tended to be a bit bland musically with songs that didn’t really stand apart from one another, Narrow Stairs, Death Cab’s second album on Atlantic, improves upon that by trying out different musical styles. There are forays into New Wave (“No Sunlight”), African rhythms (“Pity And Fear”), and even Pet Sounds-era-Beach Boys’ pop (”You Can Do Better Than Me”). While the band sometimes seems tentative on these new avenues, it certainly makes for a diverse listen.

If only Gibbard’s subject matter followed suit. There is an obsession with mortality here that borders on ridiculous. It’s hard to find a song that doesn’t mention hearts or souls dying, breath leaving, graves, or any other possible reference to the Great Beyond. Without even a trace of humor to lighten things up, this is a pretty downbeat CD to sit through.

Gibbard has also never met a metaphor he didn’t like. While it must make for an interesting existence to be able to see the signs of a failed relationship in just about any basic household item, it leads to some labored songwriting. It works occasionally (“Your New Twin Sized Bed”) but fails more often than not (“Long Division” or “The Ice Is Getting Thinner”).

Narrow Stairs is at its best when DCFC go back to the layered soundscapes of their 2003 indie breakthrough, Transatlanticism, and Gibbard doesn’t try so hard. “Grapevine Fires” manages an unusual optimism as Gibbard finds comfort in watching his girlfriend’s daughter dance among the graves of a cemetery while the city behind her burns. And “Cath” is a dead-on character study of a fading beauty who marries for convenience rather than love (“She holds a smile/Like someone would hold a crying child”).

Setting these sharp observations and small but telling moments against an atmospheric musical backdrop is what Death Cab For Cutie does better than just about anybody. If only, on Narrow Stairs, they did it more often.