Review Summary: As a collection of songs, this is probably the best indie-pop that will be released this decade. Go listen.
As soon as Ben Gibbard's decisive vocals bounce off the back of an equally convincing drum beat, you know you're in for an experience. For a start, the bounds of his aggression had never stretched all that far, certainly peaking on Styrofoam Plates. He hardly sounds angry when he asserts, "So this is the new year," but he's sure of himself. The lyric in itself seems appropriate for the opening of an album that carries so much power of immersion you'll wonder where the last 45 minutes went; its delivery, fused with the conviction of the bass and drums behind it, subtly hint at something a little different to the understated indie-pop of Death Cab For Cutie's roots. And then you're in - you've taken the plunge into Gibbard's melodic sensibility, insecure poetry and intricate observations.
2001's The Photo Album really put Death Cab for Cutie into the spotlight. With their obvious knack for writing catchy pop music, it's fair to say that by this point in their careers they had amassed a fanbase deep enough to hype the release of Transatlanticism and provide some form of expectation. Not pressure, per se, but anticipation. Their 2003 offering, a sincere and pristine collection of poignant and mellow pop songs, does not disappoint on any level; as a matter of fact, it succeeded in thrusting them onto the main stage in a way even they had probably not considered.
Death Cab possess two prominent qualities which set them apart from the competition. The first of these is their aforementioned ability to pen seamlessly melodic hooks with gentle but inescapable riffs, rhythms and, most noticeably on 'Lightness', basslines. On 'Tiny Vessels', Gibbard's vocals fit a melody which should be the pinnacle of the song musically, but you actually come away finding it harder to ignore the picked guitar line behind the verse. And all throughout, the music accompanies the subject matter so well that it half sounds like a fluke. On 'Title and Registration' the opening sparse and hollow guitar and beat seem, somehow, to conjure the specific image that Gibbard's lyrics convey in the second stanza. But there's nothing lucky about it; it just fits.
And intertwined somewhere there you have their second secret weapon, although by now it's so well appreciated that it could hardly be called covert - Gibbard's lyrical ability. His way of intricately connecting unimportant features of everyday life to deeply ingrained emotions (and, at times, whole emotional mindsets) is comfortably on a par with - although notably different in aesthetic - to modern masters like Conor Oberst. His way with language means that even when the music becomes standard fare, his words and sentiments are enough to keep you hanging onto every note and syllable. 'The New Year', 'Expo '86' and 'We Looked Like Giants' would sell as poetry. The songs are also lyrically dense enough to provide intrigue and new experiences on repeat listens, which is a rarity, especially in-genre.
The album's title-track is a perfect example of Gibbard's talent in the art of imagery. As he works his way through the first two verses, it's clear that they are phenomenal pieces of writing, but he's just getting warmed up. As the song builds, the lyrics become gradually more simple and desperate, and the first two stanzas are merely a pretext to two of the best-executed lines in memory. Pleading through a wall of piano and a barrage of cymbals, he sings, 'I need you so much closer,' over and over, with increasing tension. The tension is the key, heightened by the instrumental interlude before he bursts back into the same lyric, which suddenly and climactically turns into a three-word chant, "So come on!" You'll be hard-pushed not to be moved. Transatlanticism's crowning glory is a tour-de-force in how to make a crescendo worth waiting for.
If this record has one flaw, it is its organisation as an entity. It almost seems as though nobody even listened through all 11 tracks before mastering and release; there can be very few other explanations for the tracklisting being so momentum-inhibiting. 'Tiny Vessels', 'Transatlanticism' and 'Passenger Seat' form a set of songs which would form a
perfect - and that's not a word to be used lightly - ending to the record, but the trio is followed by three more tracks. None of those are filler material - there's not a drop of it in sight - but they don't work after such an epic trio of songs. But hey, perhaps it was intentional. Perhaps producer Chris Walla - whose work throughout the album is sublime - decided that tripping the listener up slightly would be an inventive twist. In fairness, every other unexpected turn this album takes could well be dubbed a stroke of genius - who's got the guts to argue against one more? Either way, it doesn't REALLY matter. As a collection of songs, this is probably the best indie-pop that will be released this decade. Go listen.
