"Gold Rush" by Death Cab For Cutie

This driving, mesmerizing song, "Gold Rush" by Death Cab For Cutie expresses a bittersweet sentiment. Lead singer-songwriter Ben Gibbard said the song is about his Seattle neighborhood of Capitol Hill where he has lived for two decades.

"As I've gotten older," Ben told NPR, "I've become acutely aware of how I connect my memories to my geography and [how] the landscape of the city changes. I'll walk down Broadway and walk past a location that used to be a bar I'd frequent with friends, or somewhere where I had a beautifully intense conversation with somebody that I once loved very much. The song is not a complaint about how things were better or anything like that. It's an observation, but more about coming to terms with the passage of time and losing the people and the moments in my life all over again as I walk down a street that is now so unfamiliar."

Not about gentrification, but about the inevitable changes perceived if one has the luxury of being here--here--for any length of time.

The track is out on August 17, 2018 on their release "Thank You For Today."

(Gold rush) Digging for gold in my neighborhood
(Gold rush) Where all the old buildings stood
(Gold rush) And they keep digging it down and down
(Gold rush) So that the cars can live underground
(Gold rush) The swinging of a wrecking ball
(Gold rush) Through these lath and plaster walls
(Gold rush) Is letting all the shadows free
(Gold rush) The ones I wish still followed me

(Change) Followed me, followed me
(Please don't change)
(Stay) Followed me, followed me
(Stay the same)

(Gold rush) I remember a winter's night
(Gold rush) We kissed beneath the street lamp light
(Gold rush) Outside a bar near the record store
(Gold rush) That have been condos for a year and more
(Gold rush) Now that our haunts have taken flight
(Gold rush) And been replaced with construction sites
(Gold rush) Oh, how I feel like stranger here
(Gold rush) Searching for something that's disappeared
(Gold rush) Digging for gold in my neighborhood
(Gold rush) For what they say is the greater good
(Gold rush) But all I see is a long goodbye
(Gold rush) A requiem for a skyline
(Gold rush) It seems I never stop losing you
(Gold rush) Because every dive becomes something new
(Gold rush) And all our ghosts get swept away
(Gold rush) It didn't used to be this way

(Change) Be this way, be this way
(Please don't change)
(Stay) Be this way, be this way
(Stay the same)
(Cranes) Be this way, be this way
(Devour the light)
(Strange) Be this way, be this way
(Appetite)

I've ascribed these monuments
A false sense of permanence
I've placed faith in geography
To hold you in my memory
(Gold rush) I'm sifting through these wreckage piles
(Gold rush) Through the rubble of bricks and wires
(Gold rush) Looking for something I'll never find
(Gold rush) Looking for something I'll never find

(Gold rush) Digging for gold in my neighborhood
(Gold rush) Where all the old buildings stood
(Gold rush) And they keep digging it down and down
(Gold rush) So that the cars can live underground
(Gold rush) It seems I never stopped losing you
(Gold rush) Because every dive becomes something new
(Gold rush) And all our ghosts get swept away
(Gold rush) It didn't used to be this way

Change
(Gold rush) It didn't used to be this way
(Gold rush) It didn't used to be this way
Please don't change

http://deathcabforcutie.com/