Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard writes lyrics that grow from small details into large stories while the music often grows in commensurate scale. Case in point:
Transatlanticism's "Title and Registration," which begins with a seemingly mundane observation -- "The glove compartment isn't accurately named and everybody knows it / so I'm proposing a swiftly orderly change" -- but turns out to be about security, a lost love, and a delicious sense of melancholy. Beginning with a crisp, resonant guitar figure and a simple electronic rhythm track, the song slowly gathers depth with distant keyboards and increasingly prominent bass. Like early New Order, who provide a template for much of
Transatlanticism, Death Cab find magic in simplicity; it's a talent Gibbard demonstrated in his recent work with the
Postal Service, too. Although the album has its overtly big moments -- "The New Year," the rallying cry for the defeated that opens the album; the eight-minute title track, about feeling oceans apart from someone; "The Sound of Settling," which shifts into high gear with crashing guitars -- it's even better on understated songs such as "Lightness," "Expo '86," and "Death of an Interior Decorator."
Transatlanticism, Death Cab's fourth album, is full of small pleasures writ large.
