161. Song No. 2,409: “Debate Exposes Doubt,” Death Cab for Cutie
The Photo Album, 2001

Fun fact: One of my college AIM names was “every night ends,” which was lifted directly from this song. If you think that sounds intentionally, painfully overwrought, then you’ve basically nailed the core of my prevailing college identity. I was fucking insufferable and it’s kind of amazing that so many of my strongest friendships with some incredible human beans have roots in our intertwining university years. But, hey, if you’re not mildly embarrassed by your younger self, have you adequately grown as a person?

So, obviously, Transatlanticism is a seminal album when it comes to bringing not only DCFC but also indie rock to the mainstream—much to the bitter chagrin of College Me, who found that the concert experience for some of my favorite bands had suddenly shifted from comfortably intimate to claustrophobically intimidating. Church basements were rudely usurped by sold-out venues, and it felt like something was being taken away from me by people who didn’t even know what it means to be a fan: to truly love some silly little piece of music or band so much that it hurts.

Whatever conflicted feelings I had about Transatlanticism signaling a shift from the Death Cab both of and preceding The Photo Album era to their rise as radio darlings have long since faded away, but I felt such a seemingly unconquerable mental and emotional divide between the two for the longest time. All that’s really left of it is to The Photo Album‘s favor, since loudly revering it as the album embodying the last of the Old DCFC lent it a little extra shine that it’s never really shed.

Death Cab being a band where I don’t so much enjoy their music song by song as prefer in whole-album chunks means that their songs always feel like slices of a greater movement rather than individually packaged tracks. I think that’s why “Debate Exposes Doubt” always feels like part palate cleanser and part catharsis, both for being the album’s closing track and for so closely following a song as dense and dark and outraged as “Styrofoam Plates,” Ben Gibbard‘s vicious indictment of an absent father whose neglect and sins don’t deserve the forgiveness death too often ushers in post-mortem. The ghost of that weight still lingers, even alphabetically divorced from its deservedly acrimonious neighbor, making this song sound like letting the sunshine stream in as quiet concession to the world always moving on even if your interior landscape is in shambles.

Aside from the heavy-lifting it does in The Photo Album, I simply love “Debate Exposes Doubt” for sounding like it would be equally as home on the earlier We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes full-length and Forbidden Love EP, which represent my hands-down favorite era of what was once my favorite band and is still one I carry a deep fondness for. This song in particular reminds me of what I love most about this Death Cab, from the lyrical richness to the somewhat ethereal, vaguely wistful musicality. I don’t have the ear or vocabulary to pinpoint the subtle tonal shift between We Have the Facts and The Photo Album or the much more noticeable one between The Photo Album and Transatlanticism, nor am I certain that those evolutions aren’t so much in the albums’ production as they are imposed by me. But there’s just something about the older albums that makes them so distinct and almost detached from the many (and increasingly more popular) albums to come; whether that difference is theirs or it’s mine, they are undeniably, palpably there in a way that will always make pre-fame DCFC feel special and personal and mine.