"This won't be the last you hear from me: it's just the start."

#25 We Have the Facts And We're Voting Yes, Death Cab for Cutie, Barsuk, 2000

I have to thank Sean B for this one. Early on in our first semester at Duke, we decided to music swap - I lent him Pedro the Lion's Winners Never Quit in return for a chance to listen to an oddly named band that Sean was stoked on. While Sean's earlier post may make you think he loaned me Def Leopard's Hysteria, in actuality it was Death Cab. From the moment the distant guitar and percussion on "Title Track" kick into a bigger pop presence with the lyrics "I tried my best to keep my distance from your dress, but call-response overturns conviction every time," I was hooked. The record as a whole seemed so lyrically astute even in the face of its subject matter: party make-outs ("Title Track"), wedding crashing ("Company Calls Epilogue"), and alcoholic summers ("405"). Musically, it is still probably Death Cab's most subdued, save maybe for "Company Calls," which features group yells of "Set! your Sights!" over a blistering indie hook. But there's something to the fact that it is so relaxed in the face of Death Cab's subsequent pop rock ascendancy that makes We Have the Facts so appealing. That, and the fact that every time I hear Ben Gibbard's "Lowell, MA"command "Don't go holding out on me now" it makes me remember Sarah and I's first year in Durham, riding down 9th street in our Sentra listening to a cassette with We Have the Facts on Side A and Pedro the Lion's It's Hard to Find A Friend on Side B. Needless to say, we wore the tape out.