U.S. Department Of Homeland Security Siezes Politically-Charged Album

The master hard drive containing all of the song files for Death Cab for Cutie guitarist/producer Chris Walla's upcoming solo album was confiscated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at the Canadian border, as a courier tried to transport it back into the U.S. after Walla had been working on it up north.

Walla explained to MTV News that although he has backup tapes of the the songs, the hard drive's disappearance into a bureaucratic "black hole" is a significant setback:

"It's a true story. Barsuk [Records, which is putting out the record]
had hired a courier — who does international stuff all the time and whothey had used before — to bring [the album] back from Canada, where I
was working on it. And he got to the border and he had all hispaperwork and it was all cool, only they turned him away, and theyconfiscated the drive and gave it to the computer-forensics division ofour Homeland Security-type people. And now I couldn'teven venture a guess as to where it is, or what it's doing there. I
mean, I can't just call their customer-service center and ask about mydrive. There's nothing I can do. I don't know if we can hire anattorney ... is there a black-hole attorney? You can't take a blackhole to court."

Homeland Security workers may have confiscated the drive because the album, called Field Manual, may have contained imagery involving instructions on how to create an improvised explosive device. Walla said,

"I'm calling it Field Manual because myself and the guy whodesigned the packaging were looking through all these Army field guidesfrom World War II. And there was one that he found that was reallyterrifying, actually. It was basically a manualissued by the Army in the late '30s, early '40s, about how to buildwhat we now call an [improvised explosive device] in Iraq orAfghanistan. Like how to hide a bomb in a bed or in a tube oftoothpaste. Just terrible stuff, and I started having this feeling of,
like, 'Well, we need a new field manual.'"

Walla described the songs on the album as "very political," and saidthey cover (among other things) morning after pills, Hurricane Katrina,
and the Iraq war.

(mtv; via rockrap; image from artistdirect)