Give Up and Transatlanticism

Before watching Twin Peaks, and even before visiting Mount Rainier and Pike Place Market in Seattle, I knew there was mythology in the Pacific Northwest. Maybe it was because Starbucks felt different from every other coffee shop I went to. Or maybe it was the CLYW edits set in forests soundtracked with lo-fi beats. Maybe it was the hipster movement that somehow pervaded my city in Metro Detroit.

When listening to Give Up and Transatlanticism, I realized this is where all that came from. That there is an accent, a look, a sensibility that ties all of it together. A sadness of living at the edge of the world. When your girlfriend moves to the nation's capital and your collaborator lives in sunny LA.

Give Up is sad, but it doesn't sound like it at first. I keep coming back to "Clark Gable," and how it reminds me of "Lets Go Bowling" by Camera Obscura: that same playfulness laid over sadness, those sound effects that kick off the chorus like a wink before the hurt sets in. Gibbard's vocals get haunted by female sub vocals. In "Such Great Heights," bubbly sine leads sit alongside Gibbard's nasally voice. In "Brand New Colony," his metaphor-heavy songwriting runs through video-game, chiptune-esque synths. This does sound formulaic: bouncy dance strums with pluck synths, random sound effects, all wrapped around Gibbard's sweet melodies sung in his sweet voice. So where is the sadness the lyrics suggest? It's just there. Hidden in the wooden walls, a hue in the grey sky, beneath a moppy haircut.

Transatlanticism had a bigger impact on me. This is where that same sadness stops hiding and just sits in the open. Ben Gibbard's fragile voice remains unbroken even after the distorted guitar chorus in "Tiny Vessels." The lines "she looked beautiful / but she didn't mean a thing to me" got to me. I felt like I could never understand that, to be in that position. That's enough. The bounce of the guitar in "Title and Registration" reminds me of their songs on We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes, a more playful record, like some of that earlier lightness survived into this heavier one. The title track sounds like a voyage.

Recently, I've been listening to the demo tracks released on the deluxe edition. They're sparse and stripped down but have their own charm. "A Lack of Color" has a lo-fi sound that makes it feel like a voicemail that never got sent. "We Looked Like Giants" has busy drums that remind you of Gibbard's collaboration with Dntel, that same restless energy showing up again in a different body.

It all points back to the same place. This happiness and sadness, sweetness and distortion, could have only come from one person and one place: Ben Gibbard, in plaid, in Washington and sometimes Silver Lake.