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Music reviews |
Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism
The best record yet from a still-young band at the top of its talents.
Barsuk Records
Release date: 10/7/03
Rating: A1. The New Year 4:06
- (mp3 from Barsuk)
2. Lightness 3:30
3. Title and Registration 3:39
- (mp3 from Barsuk)
4. Expo '86 4:11
5. The Sound of Settling 2:12
6. Tiny Vessels 4:21
7. Transatlanticism 7:55
8. Passenger Seat 3:41
9. Death of an Interior Decorator 2:56
10. We Looked Like Giants 5:32
11. A Lack of Color 3:35Death Cab for Cutie has a terrible name (it’s apparently a song title from a sixties one-hit-wonder band). But they are the best rock band of the ‘00s so far – sorry, White Stripes, New Pornographers and Flaming Lips, but with Transatlanticism, Death Cab beats you all by a nose.
The Washington state band’s fourth full-length record and third since 2000 (and don’t leave out the phenomenal 2000 Forbidden Love EP) is its best yet. Singer-songwriter Ben Gibbard, guitarist-producer Chris Walla and colleagues continue to improve their winning combination of lush melodies, bold guitars, and Gibbard’s oh-so-sensitive, Pacific-Northwest-Morrisey vocals. This is a rare group that can craft a perfect three-minute pop song, pull off an eight-minute epic, and attempt “deep,” storytelling lyrics (usually) without embarrassing themselves.
Transatlanticism isn’t a stylistic departure from previous DCFC albums Something About Airplanes, We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes, and The Photo Album – though Walla’s production is clearer and more immediate (spot-on perfect for the group’s sound). What makes this their best outing to date is its consistency: there are no throwaway songs on this record. While previous albums (particularly 2001’s Photo Album) combined a few gems with several forgettable tracks that wore out their welcome (“We Laugh Indoors,” “Coney Island,” “For What Reason,” etc.), there’s none of that on Transatlanticism.
Death Cab’s sound can still be safely described as “delicate,” even when the tempo picks up and the guitars get louder, as on album opener “The New Year” and obvious single “Expo ‘86.” Most songs are wistful, reflective melodies, with Gibbard callow-voicedly crooning something along the lines of “long-distance-relationships-are-so-hard-and-time-passes-so-quickly-why-didn’t-things-work-out-between-us.” Which is great when it works, and it usually does, quite well, on Transatlanticism. Thankfully, DCFC has cut back on the over-the-top mushiness that made some of the group’s past lyrics sound as though penned by a lovesick fourteen-year-old who clearly didn’t try out for the football team. Cut back, that is, but not eliminated.
The album jumps right in with “The New Year,” one of the album’s “louder” tracks, with swirling, fuzzy guitars. A bit bombastic, the song is best at its bridge, which includes most of the lyrics, which seem to be about long-distance relationships during a ho-hum January 1: “I wish the world was flat like the old days, so I could travel just by folding the map. No more airplanes or speed-trains or freeways, there’d be no distance that could hold us back.” Like most Death Cab songs, there’s no chorus, though Gibbard repeats “So this is the New Year” enough to make you think there is.
“Lightness” slows things down and establishes that delicate, sensitive tone, though it’s not clear what the song’s about. The chorus, with Gibbard accompanied by a beautiful guitar part and, later, a steel drum, is one of the album’s highlights.
“Title and Registration,” one of the best songs overall, has an excellent lyric about fumbling in the glove compartment for said documents and finding pictures of an ex. Accompanied by a catchy guitar arpeggio, driving bass and a windshield-wiper rhythm, Gibbard laments, “All I find are souvenirs from better times, before the gleam of your taillights fading east to find yourself a better life.”
“Expo ‘86” is the most immediately likeable song on the album, a surprisingly upbeat pop tune that is Death Cab’s most accessible work ever – and I mean that in the best and worst possible ways. While it’s the first song I’d play for someone not familiar with DCFC’s work, it’s also the first song that gets a bit tiresome after playing Transatlanticism several times.
“The Sound of Settling” is a fast-paced, hook-heavy two-and-a-quarter minutes, complete with “ba-ba” lyrics, about getting old. It’s followed by the slow, mopey “Tiny Vessels,” a pretty ballad about falling out of love by choice, brought down a notch by a lame couplet about giving a hickey. These two tunes are as close as Transatlanticism gets to a low point – they’re still darn good songs, better than most bands could come up with, but they are outshined by the rest of the record.
Especially what comes next: the monumental 8-minute title track. Mournful piano chords, a striking guitar part, underlying synth and Gibbard’s “I need you so much closer” lyric combine for a slow, sad, hazy, awfully pretty song. If you’re in a long-distance relationship, you’ll probably find yourself playing this song twelve times a day, whenever you need to wallow. “Transatlanticism” builds, getting louder, to a symphonic, almost optimistic end, which fades into the piano and reverb of “Passenger Seat,” a sweet, comfortable ballad. Rather than the loneliness of long-distance love, “Passenger Seat” is about being as close together as the other side of the car’s front seat. This would be the prom theme at a high school far cooler than the one you and I attended.
But there’s more. “Death of an Interior Decorator,” another storytelling, mid-tempo pop song, stretches the range of Gibbard’s voice and is carried brilliantly by Walla’s skillful guitar-playing. (If Ben Gibbard at times recalls Morrissey, Chris Walla is his Johnny Marr – though Built To Spill’s Doug Martsch gets some credit for his sound too.)
Next is “We Looked Like Giants,” a faster-paced song about young lust, with lyrics right out of a Harlequin bodice-ripper novel (“I’d brave those mountain passes and you’d skip your early classes, and we’d learn how our bodies worked”). Not as bad as it sounds, though it’s not hard to imagine this one serving as soundtrack for a network prime-time melodrama (like Fox’s truly awful The O.C., which gives the band free publicity by making one of its characters a DCFC fan). The album’s closer, “A Lack of Color,” ends things well with acoustic guitar and more sweet and forlorn lyrics, though once again barely this side of sophomoric and overwrought (“I’m reaching for the phone to call at 7:03, and on your machine I slur a plea for you to come home”). A good ending, though; as “Color” fades, it’s hard to resist going back to “The New Year” and doing it all again.
All in all, Transatlanticism is so good that it’s going to test the band’s commitment to remain independent, with spotty distribution and a tiny promotional budget. Like a lot of people who’ve listened to DCFC for a few years now, I’m resigned to the probability that someday they’ll end up leaving Barsuk Records for some conglomerate that can get their stuff displayed at Wal-Mart, that they’ll show up on TRL and pretty much drop the “For Cutie” from their name. (Not that this is all bad in itself – Nirvana wasn’t hurt by leaving Sub Pop for Geffen, where Sonic Youth still are making good records – but why is it that, nine times out of ten, an artist’s decline begins with that major-label signing? Maybe Liz Phair or J. Mascis can tell us.)
I don’t mean to impugn the band’s character or anything. The point is, their music’s simply too appealing for them to remain on the margins. They’re a natural for the Avril Lavigne rebellious-but-safe-pop demographic, and the buzz around them is growing steadily. Perhaps the only thing that can save them is that they can’t dance, and it’s hard to imagine Ben Gibbard ripping off anyone’s undergarments at the Super Bowl halftime show.
Until that happens (or doesn’t!), enjoy this document of a terrific band at the top of its talents, and congratulate yourself for hearing them before they hit it big. And next time you need to shut up one of those morons who complains about how much rock sucks lately, Transatlanticism is there for you.
