Those same sounds run under the full length of the album’s closer, “A Lack of Color.”Īccording to frontman Ben Gibbard, in those moments we’re hearing a field recording of the city captured in stereo at 3 am from his old attic apartment bedroom on Mercer Street between Bellevue and Summit Avenue. Just before the guitar feedback meanders in on the opening track, “The New Year,” a high C from a Hammond organ hangs in the air as the distant whoosh of cars driving down a highway washes over it.
Any record made in Seattle by people who live in Seattle will sound like Seattle in some way, but the city literally makes the first sound on Death Cab for Cutie’s 2003 breakout record, Transatlanticism.
