3. Transatlanticism (2003)

As discussed in the introduction, Transatlanticism feels like the album that ushered in a new crop of Death Cab fans, so it’s only fitting that that the album starts with a track called “The New Year.” It’s a clear ascension from the scraggiliness of their debut album Something About Airplanes, but feels quintessentially Death Cab, even with its production sheen. “Title And Registration” fits into the band’s legacy of off-kilter song names; it’s also the album’s brightest moment. It displays Gibbard’s ability to take arbitrary small talk and mutate it into an anecdote about a revelatory experience. Rarely does an artist so effectively explore that A-to-B-to-Z thought process. Here, you’ve discovered a photograph from a failed relationship but in the turbulent nostalgia-flood, the electricity in your busy brain trips a wire — the memory of your old love dissolves and you’re wondering why the fuck the bay above your passenger seat floor is called a “glove compartment” when it’s meant to hold paperwork, not accessories. And they do it again with “Tiny Vessels.” And again with “We Looked Like Giants” and “A Lack Of Color.” It’s honest, it’s brutal, it’s brilliant.