Sometimes an album doesn’t just sound good, doesn’t just become a favorite, but provides a truly personal and emotional experience, a connection that strikes you to your core. These albums are rare, but when you do find them, it’s one of the most amazing experiences to listen through. At the beginning of my freshman year of college, I was a die-hard metal fan and pop listener. Through a recommendation, I had come across an indie rock band by the name of Death Cab for Cutie months ago, but had never fully given them a listen.
At the time, I didn’t listen to or enjoy much indie rock, but something about the songs I heard and the feelings they evoked resonated with me. The album I was really intrigued by had an eye-catching cover: a crow tangled up in red string. It’s been two years since I first gave that album a full listen, and that crow is now tattooed on my chest. If you haven’t listened to this album, allow me to reveal to you the beautiful thesis on love, loneliness, and distance that is “Transatlanticism.”
“Transatlanticism” has a loose concept of a long-distance romantic relationship. It’s not the most fleshed-out concept — more of a thematic thread tying the tracks together — but this commonality allows these songs to have a yearning and nostalgic feeling, a feeling of wishing for what used to be. Even though I’ve never personally had a long-distance relationship, the themes and lyrics of this album still felt tailored to me. As I continue to revisit the album, the songs connect with me in different ways, attaching themselves to different memories and experiences.
I think this strong connection comes from the strength of Ben Gibbard, the lead singer of Death Cab, as a songwriter. He writes lyrics that don’t feel vague, in fact, are often quite specific, but does so in a way that I really feel anyone can form a connection with them. The emotion is also amplified by the fantastic production by guitarist Chris Walla, who gives the album the atmosphere, punch, and instrumental simplicity at the right moments. The band has a very ruminative and emo-influenced take on indie rock, with meditative songs that sprawl out into bigger soundscapes when the drama needs increasing. The guitar work is simple but tender, and while the band doesn’t usually rock out in a way other bands such as the Strokes might, it makes the moments when the loud guitars and faster drumming rush in that much more impactful.
One of the essential moments on the album is the opening track, “The New Year.” It begins with a humming sort of ambience, a sound that can be heard throughout the album in various songs, making the tracks feel intertwined even if they cover different vignettes of loneliness. When the guitars come in, it’s a rush of feeling. The song discusses the literal new year, humorously ponders the use of resolutions, and touches on the themes of distance and yearning that define the record, “I wish the world was flat like the old days / Then I could travel just by folding a map / No more airplanes or speed trains or freeways / There’d be no distance that could hold us back.” The song is structured to immerse you in the story of the album, progressing more linearly and eschewing the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus structure of traditional rock songs. “The New Year” hooks you from the first hum of ambiance to the last lyric and fading guitar — it prepares you for the emotional journey that is to follow.
Perhaps my overall favorite part of the record is the three-track run in the middle that begins with “Tiny Vessels” and ends with “Passenger Seat.” These three back-to-back tracks are a concentration of beauty, nostalgia, and emotion; they hit harder than everything else on the record, as great as everything else is.
“Tiny Vessels” might be my favorite song by the band and one of my favorite songs of all time. It’s heartbreaking in its cruel detachment with the refrain of “She is beautiful, but she don’t mean a thing to me.” The narrator in this song can’t form an emotional connection with the song’s subject, and his lack of feeling is further delved into with lyrics like, “I wanted to believe in all the words that I was speaking as we moved together in the dark,” as well as, “So when you ask, ‘Is something wrong?’ / I think ‘You’re damn right there is, but we can’t talk about it now’.” It’s a song that depicts a lack of connection so well. It’s borderline unlikable with how honestly the narrative plays out, but that honesty makes me love it that much more. It’s not an idealized depiction of love, it’s an honest depiction of its absence.
Following this is the title track, “Transatlanticism.” This song is the longest on the record at nearly eight minutes, but every second is used masterfully. This is the real thesis of the album, the most focused on the concept of a long-term relationship, and the distance between the two lovers. The song has a very gradual progression with more instrumental motifs and atmosphere building up until the release, ending with a chorus of voices singing, “So come on, come on.” In all honesty, I can’t really explain how beautiful it sounds with words. I will say that when I got to see this song performed live, with a whole crowd singing along, it was one of the most breathtaking experiences of my entire life.
The final song in this sort of trilogy is “Passenger Seat.” In contrast to the massive, grand feeling of the title track, “Passenger Seat” is a very simple piano ballad with light touches of atmosphere, describing the narrator remembering sitting in the passenger seat of a car as their partner drives them home, taking in the nature they drive past and feeling content in that moment. “With my feet on the dash, the world doesn’t matter.” The song aches with a love that, given the rest of the record, we know isn’t quite there anymore. These three songs are the best part of the record. That’s not at all to downplay how amazing the rest of the album is, but nothing hits me quite as hard as these three songs, back to back.
“We Looked Like Giants” is one of the most cathartic emotional releases on the album. The song explores themes of early sexual experiences and the vulnerability and emotion that come with them. It reminisces on these experiences the narrator had with his partner. “Remembering when you were mine in a still suburban town.” The song also has the loudest “rock” moment on the record, with the chorus bursting into a blare of guitars and uptempo drumming and Ben Gibbard intones above the clamor: “And together there / In a shroud of frost, the mountain air / Began to pass / From every pane of weathered glass / And I held you closer / Than anyone would ever guess.” With how reserved the rest of the record is, this blaze of energy gives the track a special emphasis and adds to the exciting and nervous feelings of young love. After this chorus, the track instrumentally slows down very gradually, becoming more and more atmospheric until the end, where the chorus is again repeated, very quietly, and the song dissolves into ambience.
“Transatlanticism” ends with the understated closer, “A Lack of Color.” Simple and bare-bones, with an instrumental consisting of solely acoustic guitar and ambience — the same ambience as “The New Year,” in fact, it loops perfectly into that track — and Ben Gibbard’s desperate lyrics about trying to save this relationship that he knows is finally dead in the water. “I’m reaching for the phone / To call at 7:03 / And on your machine I slur a plea for you to come home/ But I know it’s too late/And I should have given you a reason to stay.” The narrator has realized that the distance between him and his partner is too big to overcome. Love knows no boundaries, but it does have limits. For these two, those limits have been reached. “This is fact, not fiction, for the first time in years,” is the lyric that finished the album. What a heartbreaking, beautiful, and poignant way to end.
I can’t promise you that you will find the same love, safety, and nostalgia in this album that I did. It came to me at a difficult time in my life, and as my music taste has expanded, I’ve only grown to love and appreciate it more. However, if there’s any album I would recommend to anyone, it’s this one. Even if you don’t like indie rock, I urge you to give it a chance. It’s cinematic yet cozy, comforting, yet lonely, hopeful, yet melancholy. It’s “Transatlanticism.” There is no other album that makes me feel like this one does. No matter what happens to me, I know I’ll always have this album with me when I need it. Even when I go weeks or months without listening to it, my tattoo reminds me of it every day. Its image lives on my body just as its songs do in my heart.
