Transatlanticism, the fourth album from Death Cab For Cutie, starts with a bang. “So this is the new year,” sings Ben Gibbard, his voice and the exuberant song brimming with possibility; “and I don’t feel any different,” however, is the song’s next line. These opposing sentiments are perhaps indicative of the whole album: in many ways, it's an aesthetic leap forward for the band, yet the fundamental formula of catchy melody, complex guitar lines, and reminiscent lyrics remains intact.
Transatlanticism is full of memorable vignettes, not unlike its predecessor, the aptly titled Photo Album. It paints portraits of ill-fated, meaningless relationships, domestic depression, fumbling discoveries in physical love, and the quiet joy in sharing a silent, late-night drive home. Fueled by Gibbard’s evocative lyrics and warm, expressive voice and bolstered by guitarist Chris Walla’s crisp production, Transatlanticism often produces twinges of nostalgia.
“I like to remember things somewhat more grandiose than they actually maybe were,” says Gibbard. “I don’t really take a lot of photos, and I don’t own a video camera ... I’d rather go to the beach and just be at the beach, and then let my memory kind of reconstruct it and build it into something far more amazing than it actually was.”
His penchant for elaborately constructed memories is apparent throughout the album, as is a cinematic influence. “Death of an Interior Decorator” sets a wedding scene— “The girls were all there / they traded their vows / the youngest one glared with furrowed brows / they tenderly kissed and cut the cake / the bride then tripped and broke the vase…” Gibbard couches many of his songs in the “dramatic scope of being on a screen, and all the colors that exist in a film that don’t exist in real life.”
If Transatlanticism sounds a bit fresher than previous Death Cab records, it’s perhaps because, to the band, it was. Rather than touring the songs and allowing them to evolve, they purposely created demos and recorded songs without first playing them live.
“We were able to deconstruct all the songs and then build them back up in a way that we’ve never done before,” says Gibbard, “which was, I think, far more productive and exciting and interesting than going in and taking a photograph of a song you’ve been playing live for three months.”
As a result, while the production is more polished than before, the songs have a certain spontaneous, creative energy to them.
“I think I’m just getting better at what I’m doing,” says Walla. “It’s a huge learning process. The thing about making records is that there are no rules. There’s no script. If you’re following a script you’re making a really boring record … There’s a lot of weird accidents on this record that we just ran with. When you plug in an amp and you turn it on and the amp’s totally f---ed up and it makes some crazy noise, I have to think twice about not recording it. ‘Are we sure we want to fix that? That’s pretty cool!’”
Email
Leave a comment