Transatlanticism

The term “transatlanticism” was coined by Ben Gibbard to define the incomprehensible emotional gap between two lovers separated by comprehensible distances—the continental United States, an entire ocean, or, most likely, just a couple floors in your freshman dorm. In the 10 years since Death Cab For Cutie released their finest record, the title has taken on an unintended resonance in regards to their career. On one side of their fourth of seven studio albums, there are three modestly performed and admirably successful LPs released on Seattle indie label Barsuk. On the other, three exquisite-sounding and wildly successful LPs released on New York City major...Atlantic. Death Cab’s aesthetic hadn’t really changed all that much, and yet how do you span the distance between the uber-#feelings video for “A Movie Script Ending” and two #1 albums (Codes and Keys hit #3), Grammy nominations, platinum sales when they meant something, huge festival slots, and Zooey Deschanel? Look, it’s nigh impossible to extricate Death Cab’s ascendance from The O.C., so how’s this: from the moment the skyrocket guitars go off in “The New Year”, Death Cab are taking a leap of faith like Seth Cohen up on that kissing booth, risking embarrassment to tell as many people as possible that they may be dorks, but they’re not going to be anyone’s secret anymore.

Up until 2001's The Photo Album, Death Cab created often excellent songs that did a limited number of things—they didn’t rock (nor did they really try), they didn’t groove, their blood didn’t run particularly hot either, even when Gibbard sang about abusive parents, any number of lost loves, or hatred for his future hometown of Los Angeles. On Transatlanticism, well, not much really changed. But Walla in particular found countless ways to work around it. We all know Summer Roberts’ “it’s like one guitar and a whole lot of complaining” wisecrack helped Death Cab far more than it ever hurt them, but what always bothered me was the idea that they ever sounded like one guy. Death Cab songs are nearly impossible to accurately recreate in a solo performance and if the rinky-dink demos (hear “We Looked Like Giants” and the title track with 8-bit drums!) included in the reissue prove anything, it’s that.

Walla takes advantage of all the band’s moving parts, ensuring each one has its own distinct sonic character and turning Transatlanticism into a downright indulgent listen, a grand buffet of texture and tone. On the whole, the band creates perfectly detailed sonic dioramas—from the piano punctuating the pregnant quietude of “Passenger Seat”, you feel a frozen forest night in the middle of winter. “The New Year” captures explosions off in the distance and the ambivalence of wondering why you can’t relate to them. Within these ornate arrangements, a clever addition sneaks in towards the end and steals the song—the xylophone that rearranges the melody of “Title and Registration”, the combination of handclaps and slashing guitars on “The Sound of Settling”, and especially the percussion, whether those of new drummer Jason McGerr or the mechanistic electronics (beyond its profile boost, the concurrent musical influence of Gibbard’s work in the Postal Service tends to be overstated).

It reveals much of their work leading up to Transatlanticism as test runs—the simple Death Cab + drum machine format of “Coney Island” or the Stability EP are upgraded to complex, mixed-meter rhythms on “Lightness” and “Death of an Interior Decorator”. On “Bend to Squares”, “Title Track”, “Styrofoam Plates” (and later, “Marching Bands of Manhattan” and “Bixby Canyon Bridge”), Death Cab developed a trick where they’d build and build and build without ever exploding into pure catharsis. The consuming title track unapologetically goes over-the-top, giving you a safe and sound drop on the most sincere, intense FaceTime conversation ever: those glistening guitars and the endless, upward ramp of the drums convey enough infinite sadness as is, and then a church choir comes in to goad the listener: will these two EVER just make out already?

Walla was expanding his scope and ambition, intersecting with Gibbard, who was doing the same as a writer. It didn’t initially seem that way: though this record gained Death Cab many, many new fans, it lost some older ones as well, and in our original review of Transatlanticism, William Morris echoed their sentiments, taking issue with the increased generality of Gibbard’s lyrics. And there’s truth to that, as Transatlanticism is full of compact ways to express the same ideas that Death Cab songs would earlier obfuscate with bigger words or dense metaphor: “So this is the new year/ and I don’t feel any different,” “I need you so much closer,” and of course, “She is beautiful, but she don’t mean a thing to me.” That said, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone else capable of pulling off Gibbard’s more typically elliptical concepts. A disastrous wedding “felt just like falling in love again” to the lonely empty nester on “Death of an Interior Decorator”. “Title and Registration” begins with a silly joke and it’s revealed as a defense mechanism as Gibbard recalls how the dumbest thing (like, “searching for some legal documents”) can unearth a wellspring of repressed feelings. It’s a phenomenon that can cause you to lose hours at a time, and “Title” sums it up perfectly in four minutes.

As a result of pulling all those heartstrings, short of the Decemberists, no band has become an easier target for people who want to assert their “I ain’t with that indie bullshit” masculinity. Granted, Death Cab For Cutie’s music never sounds sexual, and you can’t really call it “rock music” as something derived from “rhythm and blues”—hell, they’ve always been an awkward fit into “emo” as a musical ideal, since that entails some basis in punk and Death Cab clearly have nothing of the sort. And that’s fine, as Gibbard sought to create the definitive songs about the span of a romantic coupling rather than a sonic approximation of it. Whereas the previous albums dealt with mundane, household affairs—reading the unemployment pages, sharing cigarettes, “We Laugh Indoors”—a lot more’s at stake this time out, emotionally and physically. Death Cab thrashes desperately throughout “We Looked Like Giants” while Gibbard recalls both the thrall of hormonal, visceral lust and the painful recollection of the liminal moments spent around jukeboxes and magazines. Wavering sonar beeps cloak low-key amorousness on “Lightness”. And, oh man…"Tiny Vessels.”

A common criticism of Death Cab (and really, its fanbase) is that wimpiness served as a cover for passive-aggressiveness or a safe haven from actually acting on emotions or impulses and risking rejection—if not outright misogyny. “Tiny Vessels” doesn’t exactly negate that criticism, it just forces the issue by putting it right out there. Though he'd reconfigure the “I spent two weeks in Silver Lake” line after his divorce from Zooey Deschanel, that's an exception, as one of Gibbard’s strengths is that his lyrics can be rich with personalized detail without sounding personal. That said, his vocals always lead you to believe that the narrator at least kinda looks like him and it's startling to hear Gibbard detail the kind of callous sexual conquest people think they're escaping by getting into the indie crowd.

The entire band is in peak form on "Tiny Vessels"—a glancing, sour note in the introductory guitar harmony precedes the unsympathetic admission that you're no different than the narrator, that "you'll tell her that you love her but you don't." Time-elapse layering of shockingly distorted guitars raise the drama during the bridge as he “wanted to believe in all the words that I was speaking/ As we moved together in the dark.” That gets most of the attention, though it’s the spellbinding third verse where all of it clears out, leaving plangent, echoing drums that house the monstrous, hollowed-out sentiment of Gibbard’s lyric—that of a total jerk who’s very aware of the thoughts and feelings of the other person, but chooses not to stop himself. It’s understandable that many people either can’t or choose not to acknowledge both sides of “Tiny Vessels”, and every time a Death Cab live crowd turns it to a singalong (and it’s usually one of the loudest), it becomes one of the most biting indictment of “nice guy syndrome” ever written.

We’ve gotten this far, so let’s just do away with it: judging Death Cab, and Transatlanticism in particular, from a completely objective standpoint feels kinda insincere and wholly inaccurate (and everybody knows it). From a lot of the descriptors above, “indulgent,” “consuming,” etc.—you can assume that, yeah, I was completely obsessed with Transatlanticism back in 2003. It was in a way that should be embarrassing in retrospect, but why judge your younger self like that? If the “little brother/sister music” tag often applied to Death Cab is going to stick, at least remember the times when your world was that small where new love (or a broken heart) filled its entirety and thensome. Or maybe that a new love shrinks your world to the point where there isn’t room for anything else. Note the central simile in “We Looked Like Giants”, two people “in the back of [a] gray subcompact/ fumbling to make contact” don’t have a lot of space to consider politics, socioeconomic struggle, whatever you consider to be “important” matters for art to discern.

I mean, I can bust out a map and point out the mountain passes of Virginia’s I-64 that I’d brave after skipping early classes or talk about the resonance of “Title and Registration” in relation to the November day in 2003 I spent getting my automotive legal documents in order or how I first heard the title track on the way to a college reunion, for crying out loud. Serendipity, for sure—but few records open themselves up to forge those kind of moments, to be a formative emotional and listening experience, pushing you to feel what you’re thinking (to flip a line from “Lightness”), daring to be universal enough to allow you to see yourself in it. If you love this album, or will, you’ll have some a personal history of your own and that’s why Transatlanticism stands out over Death Cab’s impressive catalog—they were always great at telling you stories, but here, they proved even better at helping you understand your own.