Transatlanticism
- Death Cab for Cutie
- Band Name: Death Cab for Cutie
- Record Label: Barsuk
- Release Date: Oct 7, 2003
- Critic Score
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100Ben Gibbard has a knack for painting scenes of such intimate detail they come off as universal.
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100A lush, impeccably produced, musically adventurous, emotionally resonant examination of the way relationships are both strengthened and damaged by distance, the album surpasses Gibbard's other career highpoints, which is really saying something.
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91[Death Cab] have never made the truly great album that their best songs promised. Until now. [Nov 2003, p.112]
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It's their best yet, and that's saying something. [#5, p.100]
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90This is a record of rare beauty and poise. [Nov 2003, p.107]
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It's the group's maturity as musicians as well as songwriters that make Transatlanticism such a decadently good listen from start to finish.
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It's Death Cab's slowest and most mature recording, and over time, hidden bits of magic reveal themselves brilliantly. [Nov 2003, p.98]
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90Retaining the naked simplicity of 2000's "We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes" while continuing to hone the more lush, hi-fi sound found on 2001's "The Photo Album," the fantastic "Transatlanticism" is full of the lovely melancholy for which Death Cab is known.
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90This album is a beautiful trek through time that pays tribute to the human condition with simple melodies and honest storytelling, a nearly perfect pop record. [Review 1, Score: 100] For old-school Death Cab supporters, it's gut-check time: Did you like these guys for their "rock" or their "indie"? While the secret is out, the music is still too emotionally honest and infectiously witty to hold at a distance. [Review 2, Score: 80]
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90Call it the exclamation point on Gibbard's stratospheric year.
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Though there are quite a few slinking, introspective tracks on Transatlanticism, there are also a fistful of songs that have the left-field appeal -- not quite punk, not quite rock, not quite pop -- that brought a song like Jimmy Eat World's "The Middle" to the top of the charts in recent years.
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Grand without ever being bloated, humane without settling into pessimism, the best indie band in North America remind us why sometimes, the rewards do not equal the output.
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There is no doubt in my mind -- and in this I seem to have a lot of company -- that Transatlanticism is Death Cab For Cutie's best album so far.
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70A further suite of touching vignettes, choice observations and killer lines. [Dec 2003, p.122]
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70Consistently compelling. [Oct 2003, p.116]
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Transatlanticism should be overwrought -- it's an album about young men enduring lost love in an ocean of memory; instead, it feels like a conversation with an old friend.
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If anything, it feels like Gibbard has regressed to the point where he sits in the shadow of his bandmate and producer, Chris Walla.
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64Transatlanticism dulls the edges of their usually acute divinations.
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Despite utilizing the same basic indie-pop template utilized to agreeable effect on its previous three albums, Death Cab for Cutie lays an outright goose egg with the bland, tepid Transatlanticism.
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60For those devoted to this rock band's increasingly artistic gear, Gibbard's a bard spinning pop-song sonnets that cause such constituents of fandom to reel real deep in some crooning-along swooning induced by the lithe lyrics.
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60It's just comfortable and pleasant enough to convince yourself to stick around - never good enough to be satisfying, nor bad enough to be disappointing.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 55 out of 56
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Mixed: 0 out of 56
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Negative: 1 out of 56
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BunifaJ.0Oh what! This aint no rap album. all I could hear wuz some **** singing some **** about some fotoboofff. Damn dat is nasty ass **** right there.