It is the first Death Cab for Cutie release not to feature Chris Walla since the band's first album, You Can Play These Songs with Chords.

[4] The album is dedicated to the memory of Scott Hutchison, frontman for the Scottish folk rock band Frightened Rabbit, who died in May 2018.

"[19] The Guardian's Michael Hann was also positive in his four-star review, noting: "The melodies are gorgeous, never overdone but always foregrounded: you would get almost nothing from the individual elements, from the bass, the guitar, the keyboards and the voice, but they add up to much more than the sum of their parts.

"[15] Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Joseph Longo described Thank You for Today as the band's "midlife crisis record," adding: "...what once exuded cathartic melancholia has now matured into overwrought melodrama.

Noting that the album is Gibbard's first since he turned 40, Clark says that "without the will or ability to eschew generalities for details, he leaves his anti-gentrification songs undercooked and his middle-aged musings feeling perfunctory and safe.