The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Here is what student manager Cole (class of 2021) had to say about this resource:
“Music Online’s Popular Music Library is exactly what it sounds like: an online repository of popular music from around the world, all tagged with the appropriate metadata to make the site an effective research tool. Something I appreciate about Music Online’s collection is the emphasis placed on international works. The site is filled with recordings of songs I have never been exposed to, across all genres and in various languages. Many of the works archived are not available for sale online, so the site can be a valuable resource if one is looking for an obscure, elusive track.
When I first opened Popular Music Library, I was immediately greeted by the album Babies Go Pink Floyd, one of the works featured on the rotating carousel of new arrivals.
I immediately clicked on it to find out what exactly I was seeing. Each album is displayed as a waveform, with vertical lines separating individual tracks. The music player is accompanied by a sidebar of details and the track listing, with each track accompanied by the appropriate metadata. After some listening and further digging on the site, I learned that Babies Go … is a series of albums, originally sold in the UK, that rework popular music acts into soothing lullabies. Some of my favorite editions include: Babies Go The Cure, Babies Go Led Zeppelin, Babies Go Shakira, and, of course, Babies Go Radiohead, the music player for which, in an apparent (and humorous) technical oversight, presents a flat line and reads, “Waveform temporarily unavailable.”
Though Babies Go … probably won’t be often used as research material, I like to imagine it as a testament to the diversity of material collected for your listening in the Popular Music Library.”
Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
What happens when three of the most influential guitarists alive, each from different eras of popular music, sit down for a day to swap stories and riffs? That’s the question at the heart of Davis Guggenheim’s 2008 documentary It Might Get Loud, starring Jimmy Page (of Led Zeppelin), The Edge (of U2), and Jack White (of The White Stripes). Although the three musicians come from differing backgrounds and generations, the film explores the three men’s lives as they’ve revolved around their shared fixation: the electric guitar.
In proportion to the total runtime, footage of the three’s meeting, dubbed “The Summit,” is relatively sparse. Instead, the film documents each of the musicians in and around their respective homes, piecing together their personal narratives, playing and recording styles, and musical philosophies. The film crew follows Jimmy Page to Headley Grange, a former workhouse-turned-recording studio whose interior acoustics can be heard on Led Zeppelin IV. The Edge visits the secondary school in Dublin where he co-founded U2 with his childhood friends. The film opens on Jack White assembling a rudimentary one-string guitar from plywood and a glass bottle on the porch of his Tennessee farmhouse. Guggenheim constantly moves between these three strands, allowing the guitarists to tell their own very different stories while revealing the subtle similarities in their lives that drove them all to the electric guitar.
My favorite moment in the film comes when The Edge delves into his playing philosophy. Known for his extensive use of reverb and delay, The Edge is sometimes criticized for playing his pedal board more than his guitar. Hearing him explain his methodology reveals the sheer creativity at work in creating his sounds, despite not “shredding” in the same vein as White and Page. At one point, The Edge plays the riff to “Elevation,” in which his guitar undulates between an indefinite number of notes. He then strips the effects and reveals the riff to be simply two notes, the space between filled with reverb, delay, and distortion. While this style of play rubs some the wrong way — such as those who consider effect pedals “cheating” to hide technical deficiencies — the great strength of It Might Get Loud is in capturing the dialogue between three pillars of guitar styles. In the film’s introductory sequence, Page admires The Edge as a “sonic architect,” a powerful compliment coming from the man most often placed beside Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton in conversations of electric guitar greatness.
Welcome back to Parsons Playlists! Today we’re featuring a collection of Indie Covers by Music Library student manager Cole (Class of 2021).
Cole says:
“I’m a huge fan of musical covers; seeing how great artists interpret one another’s work is purest joys of being a music fan. There are, of course, certain covers that everyone knows (Jeff Buckley’s cover of John Cale’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s original “Hallejulah” comes to mind). But I have a particular affinity for covers done by indie artists. I love seeing how smaller acts put their own unique spin on familiar songs, dancing on the line between fidelity and novelty. Collected below are some of my favorite covers by indie and alternative artists.”
Richmond native Lucy Dacus graduated from Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School and attended Virginia Commonwealth University. She is also one third of the indie supergroup boygenius, alongside Julien Baker and Pheobe Bridgers.
Bonus: Punch Brothers – “Reptilia” (originally by The Strokes)
This is one of my favorite covers, though it was never formally released and cannot be included in the Spotify playlist below.
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Kanopy Music Videos offers streaming videos of performances and documentaries in all musical genres.
Here’s what student manager Colin (class of 2021) had to say about Kanopy Music Videos:
“A resource that I enjoy from our streaming audio & video resources is the Kanopy Music Videos selection. This website has a great, diverse selection of films that most people will be able to find something of interest to them. Examples of these topics include videos on documentaries, live concert performances, ethnomusicology, music instruction, classical music, opera, musicals, and much more. While this service may not focus particularly on one genre or characteristic of music, limiting its resources to deep or extensive videos on one topic, Kanopy guarantees that all users will find something of interest and help. The user interface is friendly, as the videos are all available by scrolling through the page, and there is a search bar to use in case a user cannot find their intended video. Kanopy Music Videos is great for me, as I am definitely a visual learner and love watching films, which this resource focuses and delivers on.”
And here is student manager Cole’s (class of 2021) take on this resource:
“I love Kanopy. It’s an online streaming service for films and documentaries that all University of Richmond students have access to via the libraries. The Music category is a diverse collection of material, including well-known films (The Beatles’ flick A Hard Day’s Night), under the radar works of ethnomusicology (Shaping Bamboo, a documentary about the ‘Are’are people of the Solomon Islands and their panflute ensembles), and even videos of music instruction, such as Max Milligan’s Play series, videos that unpack the unique playstyles of iconic guitarists.
Two other notable resources include both of Ken Burns’ music docu-series: Jazz and Country Music. These expansive series could be useful for any research into the respective genres. Another benefit of Kanopy is the inclusion of time-stamped, fully searchable (via CTRL + F) transcripts with all of their videos. This makes pulling out specific clips or quotes far easier, especially for series such as Ken Burns’ with total running times of over 1,000 minutes.
Kanopy is one of my favorite library resources, both for research and entertainment. I find it easy to lose myself in its vast catalog, and I always leave with a longer list of things to watch.”
The Music Library has more resources available than physical items. We’re highlighting some of our digital resources, and including information about them as told by our student employees.
Archive of rock and pop music journalism from mainstream publications and niche magazines.
Here is what student manager Cole (class of 2021) had to say about Rock’s Backpages:
“Rock’s Backpages is an online archive of popular music journalism, from industry standards like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, to more obscure and international publications, such as Stereo Review and Melbourne Weekly. Although the site catalogues a wide array of content (including reviews, letters, obituaries, book excerpts, press releases, columns, and more), the advanced search function makes it easy to filter by subject, author, original publication, and format.
My favorite use of the site is to read old reviews of albums and artists that I like, to get a sense of contemporary critical reception. In a 1980 review of U2’s debut album Boy, Paul Mory calls the group’s music “not radical, in many ways… traditionalist.” Seven years later, in a review of the band’s seminal album The Joshua Tree, Simon Reynolds writes that the band’s very existence is “at once radical and reactionary.” I find this not-conversation of radicality especially amusing considering the band’s current reputation among my generation as that dad-rock group whose 2014 album was forced upon anyone with an iPhone— an idea that would be humorously unfathomable for those critics writing in the 80s.
The Rock’s Backpages archive is the perfect tool to read music journalism from years past, uncolored by retrospection.”
And here is student assistant Alex’s (class of 2021) take on this resource:
“Rock’s Backpages is a fascinating resource and a deep dive into the views on musicians in their prime. If you have ever wondered what mainstream journalists thought of The Beatles in 1963 or AC/DC in 1975, this resource is right for you. You can use the “Free Articles” section on the left side of the screen under the resource’s Library to find an assortment of 1000s of articles on pop and rock stars through the ages. You can also easily search for any article you want to read and filter by artist, genre, publication, or writer. Rock and Pop music took the world by storm in the 20th century and you can read all about it as it happened with this amazing resource.”
Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
You’re watching a film. It’s a sports movie about a chippy group of underdogs defying all odds and barreling towards impossible success. Or it’s a coming-of-age story about teenagers coping with the incredible, ineffable weight of being. Or it’s a true story of human struggle in the face of calamity–a military operation gone wrong; an oil rig exploding. What music is playing? If the film was made in the past two decades, there’s a very good chance it’s post-rock.
The term ‘post-rock’ was coined by music journalist Simon Reynolds in 1994. It is used, broadly, in reference to any music that uses rock instrumentation but doesn’t adhere to rock song convention. Post-rock songs are most often long instrumental pieces that focus on musical texture and build to all-out climaxes, a subgenre affectionately dubbed ‘crescendocore.’
In 2003, Texas-based post-rock band Explosions in the Sky released their third studio album, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. This album is widely regarded as their greatest work, and is considered one of the essential works of the genre. Explosions’ brand of post-rock — layers of reverb and delay-laden guitars punctuated by the ever-marching cadence of a snare drum — came to define the genre in the early 21st century, due in no small part to the 2004 film Friday Night Lights.
After Explosions released The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, they were approached by Brian Reitzell, a Hollywood composer, producer, and film music supervisor, about soundtracking the upcoming big-budget sports film Friday Night Lights. At this point, having a relatively unknown post-rock outfit soundtrack a major Hollywood release, let alone a sports movie, was unheard of. Rocky III’s “Eye of the Tiger“, this was not.
After Reitzell demoed the group’s music to studio executives, permission was granted to bring the band on board. Musically, the soundtrack to Friday Night Lights retains much of the aesthetic of The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. The band even adapted the song “Your Hand in Mine” from the album for the film.
Friday Night Lights went on to be both a critical and commercial success, though its greatest influence on the film industry was arguably its Explosions-crafted soundtrack. The film ushered post-rock into the mainstream, and the band’s music quickly found use as ‘temp-music’ — music used by directors when editing their films to give an idea to their composer of how they want a piece to sound (for an in-depth account of what temp music is and how it affects a film’s production, check out this video from Every Frame a Painting). James Rettig of Stereogum even went as far as to call the band’s signature sound to “a cheat code for music supervisors seeking to convey emotional turmoil and the triumph of the human spirit.”
If the Friday Night Lights soundtrack is the sound that launched a thousand imitators, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place is the band’s full-length expression of that sound, uncompromised by the necessities of scoring a film. Though their music has inescapable cinematographic connotation, Explosions in the Sky’s albums remain an intensely intimate listening experience. The lack of lyrics in fact enhances the music’s narrative potential: It invites you to construct a mental movie theater for one. You sit down in your seat and gaze up at the silver screen as your own memories are projected in front of you. Scenes from your life play out like a film, a melodramatic filter laid over it all. You conjure some memories that aren’t your own — games never played, starry night skies above fields never lain in, chances never taken — but the feelings are yours. When you open this album, you are greeted by the explanation to its title: “The Earth is not a cold dead place because you are breathing, because you are listening.”
Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
“Why Karen Carpenter Matters” book cover (image: University of Texas Press)
2019 marks fifty years since the release of the Carpenters’ debut album Ticket to Ride (1969; originally released as Offering). Over a fourteen-year career, the Downey, California based brother-sister duo of Karen and Richard released ten albums and were best known for their runaway hits “(They Long to Be) Close to You” (1970), “We’ve Only Just Begun” (1970), and “Top of The World” (1973). Richard handled much of the writing and all of the arranging of their songs, blending easy listening, adult contemporary, and classical stylings together, despite the popularity of hard rock at the time. Richard crafted their songs to bolster the uniquely low and rich voice of his sister. The Carpenters’ signature sound was characterized by the use of multi-tracking to back Karen’s voice with itself to provide harmonies, a technique known as overdubbing. Indeed, it was Karen who was eventually forced out from behind her drum set to become the reluctant star of the group.
The story of the Carpenters is ultimately one of tragedy. As their fame grew, so did the demands of a near-constant touring schedule. This, coupled with increased scrutiny from the media, is speculated to be the cause of Karen’s development of anorexia nervosa. Around the same time, Richard developed an addiction to Quaaludes, a sleeping pill. Although Richard cured his addiction through rehab, little was known about eating disorders at the time that any treatment Karen underwent was dubious at best. She died from complications from anorexia in 1983 at the age of thirty-two.
The Carpenters, 1974 By A&M Records – Billboard Magazine, page 2, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75866990
In the decades since Karen’s death, the Carpenters’ catalog has been critically re-evaluated several times over, amassing further acclaim alongside greater examination into the Carpenters’ personal lives and a paradigmatic shift in understanding of anorexia nervosa. One such re-evaluation comes in the form of Karen Tongson’s Why Karen Carpenter Matters, released earlier this year. Part-biography, part-autobiography, and part-musicography, it charts not only the life of Karen Carpenter, but Karen Tongson (the author — named for Carpenter) and her lifelong relationship to the music of the Carpenters. A Filipino-American immigrant, Tongson draws inspiration from her own life to examine why the music of the Carpenters endures for people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, and anyone else who has craved the “white normalcy” that middle class suburbanites Richard and Karen seemed to embody. Tongson emphasizes Karen’s well-documented tomboyishness as a form of queer identity, and highlights how Karen, like so many minorities, obsessed over achieving a “white picket fence lifestyle” as a form of validation. Tongson’s writing put to words an understanding I first suspected while watching Fresh Off The Boat with my Japanese-American mother: though their children may only want to escape it, for many immigrants, white suburbia is the dream.
If it wasn’t already obvious, I’m a fan of the Carpenters. Their arrangements were superb and Karen was a generational talent. But even for those who find their music ‘too soft and too white,’ I recommend this book. At 138 pages, Why Karen Carpenter Matters is a brief and pleasant read that challenges some of the predominant assumptions we hold about why we love the music we love.
The Carpenters’ fifth studio album, Now & Then (1973) is also available for check out from the Parsons Music Library.
Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
To me, John Mayer stands as one of the most interesting musical icons of my childhood. Originally making his name as a pop-rock singer-songwriter, Mayer garnered attention early in his career for his guitar ability (he attended Berklee College of Music’s guitar program for two semesters). After the success of his 2001 debut Room for Squares (for which he won his first Grammy) and 2003’s Heavier Things, Mayer pivoted when he released Try! (2005), a blues record released under the moniker of the John Mayer Trio. With his most acclaimed album, Continuum (2006), Mayer sought to unite his earlier pop-rock stylings with his recent efforts in blues.
Though for whatever reason, it’s Mayer’s first album, Room for Squares, that I find myself listening to more often than his more acclaimed and successful releases. I fully agree that Continuum is a masterfully executed record that showcases the best of his songwriting ability. And Where The Light Is: John Mayer Live in Los Angeles (2008) might be my favorite live album of all time. But there’s something wonderfully innocent about Room for Squares absent in his other works, like the lovable arrogance with which Mayer scoffs at those who doubted his decision to drop out in “No Such Thing”:
“I want to run through the halls of my high school
I want to scream at the
Top of my lungs
I just found out there’s no such thing as the real world
Just a lie you’ve got to rise above”
And then immediately doubts himself in “Why Georgia”:
“’Cause I wonder sometimes
About the outcome
Of a still verdictless life
Am I living it right?”
Or maybe it has more to do with the fact that, to me, the album itself is seems distanced from the controversy-plagued, self-proclaimed “ego addict” that Mayer eventually become known as. Contrast this with his 2003 acceptance speech for his first Grammy award (for “Your Body Is a Wonderland” off of Room for Squares), in which Mayer remarked “this is very, very fast and I promise to catch up,” and you might begin to appreciate the sort of unspoiled innocence of Meyer’s debut, and indeed, his early career as a whole. Regardless, Room for Squares remains an often stunning debut (see: guitar part on “Neon”) from a man who would go on to change the landscapes of both pop and blues music.
John Mayer playing live at Tower Records in Atlanta, Georgia 2001
Today’s installment of Arachnophonia is by Music Library student worker, Cole (class of 2021) and features U2’s album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Thanks, Cole!
U2’s 10th studio album All That You Can’t Leave Behind was released on October 30th, 2000. It is their fourth-highest selling album, with over 12 million copies sold.
“Let’s be frank.” I feel like any discussion regarding U2 in 2018 has to, for whatever reason, be prefaced by those three words. The fabled Irish rock band present a somewhat curious case in the canon of The Great Rock And Roll acts; few bands achieved such a breadth of critical and commercial success without famously disbanding (see: The Beatles, The Smiths, and, to a lesser extent, Pink Floyd.) or cycling through members to the point of near-unrecognition (The Rolling Stones). No, U2 are still here, still plucking away through a slew of pedal effects. From Boy (1980) to Songs of Experience (2017), co-founders Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. have experienced everything that a modern musical career could promise. Eight number one albums in the United States. 22 Grammy awards (more than any other group). A PR misstep that has forever associated their name with “how do I get this off of my iPhone?” Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Multiple collaborations with Kendrick Lamar that can at best be described as “uncomfortable.” The Dublin boys have done it all.
So, let’s be frank: the U2 of today is not the U2 of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, just as that U2 isn’t the U2 of Achtung Baby, just as that U2… etc., etc., ad nauseam. Nor should they be. A discography spanning such a great length ought to be varied, especially if the band in question is as experimental and flippant with their sound as U2. For this reason, I chose to write about their tenth studio album.
All That You Can’t Leave Behind constitutes the best of U2’s ever-changing sound. After a mixed reception to their industrial and electronic dance-inspired efforts of the ‘90s (Zooropa and Pop), the group set out to record a ‘return to form.’ Melding the electronic drums of the group’s Pop-era sound with the Edge’s signature effect-driven guitar playing, more reminiscent of The Joshua Tree than ever, the lead single “Beautiful Day” proved an instant success, charting at #1 in the U.K, the Netherlands, and Australia, and #21 in the U.S. In keeping with their tradition of social conscience, the fourth and final single, “Walk On” was inspired by and dedicated to Burmese democratic activist Aung San Suu Kyi, who was at the time placed under house arrest. “Walk On” is widely regarded as U2’s greatest ode to hope, due to both the instrumentation, centered on one of the Edge’s most gratifying riffs, and the heartening lyrics:
Walk on, walk on
What you got they can’t steal it
No they can’t even feel it
Walk on, walk on…
Stay safe tonight
All That You Can’t Leave Behind is the album that forced U2 into the very core of my musical tastes. I fully accept that The Joshua Tree is the band’s best output (and indeed, one of the greatest rock records ever), but there’s an elusive quality to this one that demands it be at the forefront in my mind. Maybe it’s just because it happened to be one of the three U2 albums forever interred in the CD player of my dad’s Oldsmobile. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the 50 minute nostalgia injection it provides. Or maybe it’s because not a great many albums are so blatantly and unabashedly a product of the moment they were created in. From the millennium-era instrumentation and lyrical inspiration, to the life the songs took post-release, All That You Can’t Leave Behind is the musical embodiment of how Bono & co. saw the world in 2000. Even for the majority of people who didn’t grow up hearing snippets of this album every time that got in their family’s car, I think we can all appreciate the power of an album that can transport us, if only for a short while, to its moment.
Today’s installment of Arachnophonia is by Music Library student worker Cole (class of 2021) and features Transatlanticism the fourth studio album by indie rock band Death Cab For Cutie originally released in 2003. Thanks, Cole!
“So this is the New Year
And I don’t feel any different”
So begins Death Cab for Cutie’s 2003 album Transatlanticism, and so too begins another calendar year. I mentioned this record in my previous Arachnophonia post, so I found it fitting to further detail it for my first submission of 2018. Written entirely by front man Ben Gibbard and recorded at the same time as The Postal Service’s Give Up, Transatlanticism offers a darker and more personal rumination on love than the synth-pop optimism of Gibbard’s collaboration with Jimmy Tamborello. Whereas Give Up dwells on relationships past, it ultimately is a celebration of those experiences. Transatlanticism is principally about the distances from others–physical and otherwise – that prevent us from being happy. It condemns, rather than celebrates, past failures.
Gibbard’s obsession with destructive distance is evident from the first moments of the album, and indeed the record’s name itself. The aforementioned intro track “The New Year” finds him mocking the inane celebration of the New Year’s holiday. Eventually, the song drops its cynical façade and ends with an honest rumination about the first type of distance addressed in the album – geographic:
“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 can hold us back”
Gibbard has become disillusioned about the “magic” of the New Year. Rather than celebrating with his friends the progression of time, he chooses instead to lament about “the old days” when the world was flat, senselessly believing that this would somehow allow him to be closer to his estranged lover.
Further on, numerous songs wrestle with an entirely different form of distance – temporal. In “We Looked Like Giants,” the second to last track of the album, Gibbard reminisces over the novelty of first love.
“I’ve become what I always hated when I was with you then
We looked like giants in the back of my grey subcompact
Fumbling to make contact as the others slept inside”
He notes the irony of how much he’s changed in the days since his high school affair and views the entire experience with an acute awareness of their naïveté. Unlike most other songs from Transatlanticism, Gibbard doesn’t pine for anything here. “We Looked Like Giants” reminisces but doesn’t dwell. It examines an old flame for what it was, not what it might have been, and in doing so provides the closest thing to a sense of closure found on the album.
Contrarily, “Title and Registration” recounts a personal experience of Ben Gibbard, stumbling across pictures of an ex-lover he “tried to forget” while searching for a legal document in the glove compartment of his car. He reminisces about this love lost thus:
“There’s no blame
For how our love did slowly fade
And now that it’s gone
It’s like it wasn’t there at all
And here I rest
Where disappointment and regret collide
Lying awake at night”
Gibbard takes an intriguing stance in this verse, first asserting that there’s “no blame” for the end of the relationship, but still expresses “disappointment and regret.” He takes issue not with the ending of the affair, but with how both parties allowed their love to extinguish with whimper. It’s only now, since distance has developed from the ending of the relationship, that Gibbard is tormented by his failure.
The final form of distance addressed in Transatlanticism, and indeed the most crucial, is emotional. As suggested in “Title and Registration,” Gibbard’s deepest wounds are delivered not by betrayal, but the slow division that sedates love into apathy. In “Expo ’86,” he critiques the very pursuit of love itself:
“Sometimes I think this cycle never ends
We slide from top to bottom then we turn and climb again
And it seems by the time that I have figured what it’s worth
The squeaking of our skin against the steel has gotten worse
But if I move my place in line, I’ll lose
And I have waited, the anticipation’s got me glued
I am waiting for something to go wrong
I am waiting for familiar resolve”
Like Sisyphus eternally rolling his boulder up a hill, only for it to roll back once he’s reached the top, Ben Gibbard feels trapped in a never-ending cycle of relationships. He desperately wants more than anything to just finish. This fixation with repetition prevents him from truly engaging in any meaningful way. Instead, he’s just “waiting for something to go wrong.”
This dissociation from romantic endeavors is what drives Gibbard in “Tiny Vessels.” Here, he confesses to his emotional detachment, painting himself in a selfish and potentially even misogynistic light:
“So one last touch, and then you’ll go
And we’ll pretend that it meant something so much more
But it was vile, and it was cheap
And you are beautiful
But you don’t mean a thing to me”
Heartbreak after heartbreak has driven Gibbard from seeking passionate love to purely physical stimulation – the very transformation he despises. While “Tiny Vessels” proves to be a moral recession, it exists to embolden the revelation of the next song, the title track “Transatlanticism.”
Just shy of eight minutes long, “Transatlanticism” stands as the focal point of the album. In many ways it proves to be antithetical to every other song on the record. Rather than a cynical dismissing of past relationships, the title track is a heartbreakingly honest plea for true love. While the song is literally about a man being separated from his lover by the birth of the Atlantic Ocean, in truth it details the death of a relationship at the hands of a widening emotional disconnect.
“Most people were overjoyed
They took to their boats
I thought it less like a lake
And more like a moat”
Gibbard makes use of all three forms of distance – physical, temporal, and emotional, – and in doing so, produces the most genuine and stunning track of the album. Unlike “Title and Registration,” in “Transatlanticism” the speaker hasn’t resigned to simply regret the death of his relationship, because a fragment of it still remains. Rather than accept the slow death, he fights tooth and nail to preserve the love that’s slipping through his fingers. The song crescendos with a simple refrain – “I need you so much closer” – repeated twelve times, and then finally climaxes with the outro:
“So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on
So come on, come on”
In my personal opinion, this is Ben Gibbard at his absolute best. Sparse, honest, and absolutely agonizing.
Since its release, Transatlanticism has been near-universally accepted as Death Cab for Cutie’s greatest work, and a seminal album of indie rock. While the band’s fan base consistently ridicules them for their more recent, upbeat outputs (fans often ironically lament how they want Ben Gibbard to be miserable again), Gibbard himself remains realistic about the band’s necessity for evolution. In a 2015 interview with Medium, Gibbard offered this:
“I cannot be the 25-year-old who wrote Transatlanticism as much as the fan can’t be the 19-year-old college student going through a break-up again.”
So I implore you, while you have the opportunity to be that 19-or-20-or-however-old-college-student-going-through-a-break-up-or-whatever-else, listen to Transatlanticism and be it.
