First taste of Ben Gibbard'ssolo album?

Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard recently announced that he’ll be releasing his debut solo record Former Lives in October.

He told Streogum that “the songs themselves are not all of a particular mode — they’re not all about one subject — and they’re not from one definitive era of my life… I’m a songwriter and that’s my job, and with every record that we’ve made there would always be a couple of tunes that just didn’t seem to fit in with the band.”

Well, now he has released a song written a few years ago that could possibly give us an early glimpse of that solo album. Ichiro’s Theme was written as a tribute to 10-time MLB All-Star Ichiro Suzuki who has been traded from Gibbard’s Seattle Mariners to the New York Yankees.

FL caught up with Gibbard when Death Cab toured Australia earlier this year to chat about about the band’s career, adventures with street art icon Sherpard Fairey, and chasing the road of author Jack Kerouac in search for deeper meaning.