"DCFC's CD is so beautiful it made me fire off this embarrassingly wretched e-mail to someone I used to know: "I'm crying and I'm picturing a lot of space, with nothing in it, and I just want something to materialize. Maybe that's why I call on old friends. I want them to appear in front of me again, like I remember them." (She still hasn't written back - I think I scared her.)"  (Jane)

"No two songs on "Transatlanticism" are alike. "Tiny Vessels" is a gorgeous ballad with a John Lennon-like modulation, "Expo '86" a catchy if peculiar singsong, and "The New Year" a glorious piece of rock embossed with sheets of guitars and driven by Mr. McGerr's drumming and a deft bridge. With his words, Mr. Gibbard transports his songs into environments that seem commonplace and yet extraordinary, and his lonely heart bleeds with simple, sometimes startling eloquence. There's little doubt he believes life should, and perhaps does, offer more than what he's seen."  (Wall of Sound)

"DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE Benjamin Gibbard sighs and swoons more prettily than just about anyone. Earlier this year, he released an album of picturesque electronic pop with his side project, the Postal Service. Now Mr. Gibbard's band, Death Cab for Cutie, returns with a gorgeous, subtle new CD, "Transatlanticism" (Barsuk). He's a sharp lyricist, with a knack for intriguing opening lines; one song begins, "This is the moment that you know/ That you told her that you loved her but you don't." And yet the real star of this disc is the producer Chris Walla (also the band's guitarist), who has created perhaps the best-sounding indie-rock album of the year by eliminating almost everything - all that's left is a series of glimmering skeletons. On the song "Passenger Seat," Mr. Gibbard is accompanied only by a stately piano line and a bed of ambient sound; the last song, "A Lack of Color," is a marvelously gentle account of lost love, with a tune that unfolds one note at a time."  (New York Times)

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