I discovered Death Cab around 2003-ish via a site called epitonic.com which I used regularly at the time for finding new music. I indirectly stumbled across the band as I'd learned that its singer Ben Gibbard had provided guest vocals on a track for an artist I was already familiar with, namely Dntel. If memory serves, I think I also discovered Dntel on epitonic but I honestly can't remember. Anyway, by falling through this particular rabbit hole, I learned of Ben Gibbard's band and found some of their tracks on the same site. I enjoyed what I heard and made a mental note of the band.
Early into 2004, I picked up 'Transatlanticism' from one of my regular high street music chains even though it didn't have any of the songs I'd previously heard on it. I played that album a lot, and, bruised and jaded as I was then, Gibbard's tales of love gone wrong found a special place in my heart.
As previous entries would suggest, once I get into a band I really like, I obsessively work my way through their back catalogue, and this was also the case with DCFC. In doing so, I discovered this album and was also pleased to learn it featured two of the tracks I'd previously downloaded from epitonic, namely 'Photobooth' and 'The Employment Pages'. The rest of DCFC's back catalogue followed in due course, and even as it did, 'We Have the Facts...' remained my favourite.
And so, as spring rolled into summer, I played that album as much as I could; its tales of love and loss, and its general mood, once again, resonating with where I was back then. Owing partly to when I first started playing this and the general sound of the music, I consider WHTF to be a summer record. By no means is this feelgood summer party music, but something about the mood and melodies does invoke sunshine for me, albeit a very bittersweet kind (something I touch on with another Gibbard-affiliated record mentioned in an entry beneath this one).
I also really like the production on this album. It has a very "band playing live in a studio" sort of feel to it, which really works well on this record. The song I've chosen below is one of my favourites. It recalls for me the ends of so many summer nights out on the town that year, winding down and heading home, or to the home of my best friend and smoking into the early hours, of lovesick introspection and listless, anaemic nostalgia. Both the song and the album that year served as a crucial reminder that life is twofold: there is no good without the bad and vice versa. In this, and in so many of WHTF's songs, I hear the happy and the sad perfectly intertwined, and in that lies the beauty of this record.
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