Kinda like: Built to Spill, Sunny Day RealEstate, Teenage Fanclub

Death Cab for Cutie’s last album, The Photo Album, showed signsthat the Bellingham, Wash. foursome was ready to move on past itslo-fi roots. The songs were bigger, the sound was more polished, butthere was still an element of restraint that kept their songsexploding into the epics they could have been.

On Transatlanticism, however, DCFC has taken its sound one stepfurther into a sonic wonderland that The Photo Album only hinted at.Opener “The New Year” starts out with a barely audible drone beforebursting into a gigantic expanse of distortion-fueled melody. Gibbardsings, “I wish the world were flat like the old days,” coincidentallymirroring the band’s transition from home-recorded indie-rockers tothe more slickly produced power pop group they are today.

Sounds of the old Death Cab are still present – the distorted drummachine on “Title and Registration,” the high school coming-of-agetale in “We Looked Like Giants” – but augmented by better productionvalues and greater audacity. That audacity is what makes the albumthe masterpiece it is, from “The New Year” to the eight-minute titletrack, the most ambitious Death Cab song to date. And no matter howhip you think you are, when frontman Ben Gibbard sings, “I need youso much closer” in his reverb-soaked soprano, you’ll be left weepinglike a little girl. But a hip one, nonetheless.

– Jeff Terich

Death Cab for Cutie plays at The SceneY