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Here are the tracks:
1. The New Year
2. Lightness
3. Title and Registration
4. Expo '86
5. The Sound of Settling
6. Tiny Vessels
7. Transatlanticism
8. Passenger Seat
9. Death of an Interior Decorator
10. We Looked Like Giants
11. A Lack of Color

Now, this will come as a surprise to those of you who know me well, but while the lyrics are amazing, what first caught my ear with this album is the elegance of the sounds. It both starts and ends with what sounds like the noise a computer makes when it's running (the hum), giving it a sense of unity. I think that someone listening to a vocal-stripped version of this album could still tell it's DCfC, but there's a sense of greater freedom and distance from We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes or The Photo Album. When I listen to "The New Year," I get a sense of opening up, where much of We Have the Facts . . . appears closed-off. As suggested in "The Sound of Settling" (track 5), this album proclaims "if you've got an impulse, let it out," clearly and with joy.

On to individual songs. My favorites are "The New Year" (track 1), "Transatlanticism" (track 7), and "A Lack of Color" (track 11). "The New Year" and "Transatlanticism" present two different but convergent views of distance. "The New Year" suggests a solely physical difference, claiming if "the world was flat like the old days . . . there'd be no distance that could hold us back," while distance in "Transatlanticism" appears predominantly emotional. A rift--the Atlantic ocean--isolates the song's narrator from the rest of the world, "making islands where no island should go (oh no)." The point of "The New Year" is that distance can be overcome, while "Transatlanticism" bears the message that "the distance is quite simply much too far." The former has a progressive, moving beat, while the latter settles, resigned, into the simplicity of its percussive chords.

While the album is by no means "happy," its message is progressive. Though "there's a lack of color here," we are told not to worry, that "this is fact not fiction for the first time in years." All the album's elements converge in the final track--the unity, the "cycle [that] never ends" (as demonstrated by the identical sounds at the end of "A Lack of Color" and the beginning of "The New Year"), and "a reason to stay." We are, together with DCfC, facing reality, and part of facing reality is recognizing not only our failings, but our capabilities. Transatlanticism is capable of transcending great distances, and of driving beauty into the human heart.


Yeah, it's good.   February 1, 2004
 71 out of 80 found this review helpful

As always, let's just get a few things out of the way.

If you're a die-hard DCfC fan, stop reading, you will buy the album regardless of anything I (or anyone else, for that matter) has to say about it.

If you're an overblown emokid with a yen for the melodramatic, you should buy this CD. You may now stop reading.

If you're a radio lover that is interested in this CD because hey, that guy from the Postal Service is in it and that Such Great Heights song is so good and it was on MTV2 and wow!, stop reading and don't buy the CD. There's a 90% chance you'll hate half the tracks on this album, just like you hated half the tracks on Give Up when you downloaded them all.

If you're like me and you're vaguely familiar with DCfC's previous work and you liked what you heard, by the album - it's quite good and although it's differently shaped than, say, The Photo Album, it's still an album that feels death cab from start to finish in both ben's lyrics and the instrumentation.

If you've never heard DCfC before, be warned: they're what the media monster has labeled as "emo" (which groups them unfairly with groups like Dashboard Confessional) because their lyrics have a personal draw toward experiences as opposed to the widely generic feel of most other music today. Transatlanticism in particular deals with relationships (and, as the name suggests, long distance relationships), and if you have (and of course you have!) experienced a relationship that ended, you'll find at least one line that calls out to you and says "Hey, I wrote lyrics for all the stuff you're feeling inside, and then I put chords to those lyrics that accentuate that feeling." Buy the CD.


OK... Not great   March 21, 2004
 26 out of 59 found this review helpful

OK...so here's the deal with this album.

-Some Great (And i mean GREAT) songs (Title and Registration, Death of an Interior Decorator)

-Some solid songs (Expo '86, The Sound of Settling, A Lack of Color)

-A whole lot of really repetetive filler (Everything Else)

Beasically, it's a mess of an album. the 7 minute repetetive build-up climax of "Transatlanticism" (the song) is OK at best, but what makes it worse is that it comes right in the middle of the album, pretty much taking away all the momentum that wasn't already sucked away from the opening track.

As for the production, many say taht it is brilliantly done, but from a record producers standpoint (my stadpoint), everything, when it boils right down to it, is overdone. However, I think alot of this is due to the fact that the songs themselves are not very involving, so tons of ear candy becomes a stopgap way of making it interesting.

Now, It is totally up to opinion, but in mine, this is the worst DCFC release to date. Go for "The Photo Album" instead.


Riding the Death Cab   November 6, 2003
 19 out of 22 found this review helpful

"I'm waiting for another repeat; Another diet fed by crippling defeat."
"Death Cab for Cutie", a band whose music is as unforgettable as its name, has truely hit the mark with this album. And while it may be somewhat of a repeat in style; its a sound far from being defeated, or drowned out.
That lyric, in the song 'Expo 86', shoots out of Ben Gibbards mouth with nothing but conviction and emotion, on Death Cabs newest and extraordinary record "Transatlanticism".
This record is wonderful, and should please fans of the band, and attract newcomers also. At times its honest, melodic, loud, soft, Sad, surreal, emotional....and sometimes all in the same song.
The songs range from confessionals: "Tiny Vessels"(confessions of a bad relationship)"Title and Registration"(A picture in a glove compartment brings back memories of regret); to character studies: "Death of an Interior Decorator"; and songs about ageing, the passing of time, and memories: "The New Year", "The Sound of Settling", "We Looked Like Giants".
This album seems to be a story about growing up, and about looking back at everything behind, and wondering about everything in front. Its a blissful masterwork by one of the best bands making music these days. Its truely a gem.


One Word Sums it Up: Disappointing   February 1, 2004
 17 out of 47 found this review helpful

I'm not one of those fan of music who kiss their death cab collections goodnight. I find them to be highly over-rated, but in the eyes of many hooded sweatshirt wearing emo (whatever that means) fan they are worthy of a Sunny Day Real Estate level of praise. Yes, I know how touching Ben Gibbard's lyrics can be and the words are huge improvement on that of those on the Postal Service CD. But there is more to music then the poetry a vocalist sings it is also about instrumentation. "So This is the New Year, and I don't feel any different." What a great way to start of an album, if only it didn't sound as though it belonged on the new Blink-182 record. The heavy distortion and high pitched (even for Ben) vocals through me off guard. The whole album just doesn't seem to flow and rather quickly I lose interest and find myself reaching for something else. Maybe I'll give it one more chance, but unless I have a revolution it's going on Ebay.