Review of two new releases   Death Cab For Cutie The Forbidden Love EP (Barsuk) Like the aftermath of a broken heart, The Forbidden Love EP shows how experience is earned at the expense of innocence. Death Cab For Cutie leader Benjamin Gibbard transforms tales of heartbreak into five captivating songs, wise but melancholy, dreary but beautiful. The Seattle indie rock four-piece spills dark, melodic sounds that swing and echo behind stories of love lost (and sense gained). With low-key, infectious beats and droning vocals, "Photobooth" recalls the dysfunctions and animosities of a past relationship, simultaneously recognizing loss and righteousness: "And as the summer's ending/ The cold air will brush your hard heart away/ You were so condescending/ And this is all that's left/ Now it's time to move on." Songs are richly layered, intensely touching and soothing. Slow build-ups give way to transcendent explosions of guitar, as in "Song For Kelly Huckaby," a somber, passionate track backed by the emotive wanes of a violin that feels like a mind-meld between the Cure and Built to Spill. The Forbidden Love EP captures the rehabilitation of a jaded heart, a worthy enough reason to throw down the cash for it. Jennifer Tatone   Einstürzende Neubauten Silence Is Sexy 2xCD Mute Friends and (interim) lovers: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Die Haut, Joel freaking Gray   Gott im Himmel! Make this silliness end! Einstürzende Neubauten--colossal demons of collapse-and-shriek, one-time Great Destroyers of pop musik's puerile nothingness, avatars of Teutonic id--have slipped to this: wonky wannabe cabaret. With Silence Is Sexy, Neubauten continues its '90s slide into self-satisfied avant-rock stardom. They once sparked literally infernal melees with their machine-pumped noise and nihilistic frenzy. Neubauten 2000 is a beast who's fallen in love with melody, its riotous stomping on Western tonal standards exchanged for flowers and ballads. Coffeehouse crooning? Love songs? Bleedin' goddamn string arrangements?!? As they say in Berlin--waht die fuch? Here is a band whose screeching, no-anesthetic dissection of the notes-and-scales sacred cow once seemed to lead the way toward a whole new world. Now, alas, they pen pop songs like everyone else. Well, not exactly like everyone else, of course--they still counterpoint their songs' mellifluous flow with occasional Sturm und Klang interludes. "Newtons Gravitätlichkeit," "Die Befindlichkeit des Landes" and "Zampano," for instance, rattle with metallic percussion while Blixa Bargeld prattles on over a liminal bass pulse. "In Circles" weds trilling chimes to a chilling background buzz. And the 18-minute, one-song ("Pelikanol") second disc spins into a dazed trance. But they've done all that before, and better. For a group whose original artistic intent--to create through destruction--was writ as big as its cracked-up towers of sound, this a sad and traitorous compromise. Even sadder, no matter how much they seem to be treading water in pop's ceaselessly shallow waters, they still stand heads-and-shoulders above most of the rest of the world. You could do far worse than Silence Is Sexy. Unfortunately, Einstürzende Neubauten could also do far better. John Graham