With tensions rising, the band decided to take time away from one another; notably, Ben Gibbard collaborated with electronic musician Dntel (Jimmy Tamborello), and released an album, Give Up, under the name the Postal Service.

The album was a success: it charted at number 97 on the Billboard 200, and was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), for shipments of 1,000,000 copies in the United States.

Death Cab for Cutie formed in Bellingham, Washington, in 1997 by singer-songwriter Ben Gibbard, multi-instrumentalist Chris Walla, bassist Nick Harmer, and drummer Nathan Good.

The group shifted their percussionists numerous times: Good was replaced by Jayson Tolzdorf-Larson, and then by Michael Schorr, with whom the band recorded their third LP, The Photo Album, released in 2001.

[5] Gibbard moved to the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, and began collaborating with electronic music artist Dntel (Jimmy Tamborello).

[11] Sessions at both studios were typically held over five day spans, with the band working leisurely and allowing themselves time to return to the recordings later for a fresh perspective.

[13] To help spark inspiration during the recording process, the quartet utilized Oblique Strategies, a card-based method for promoting creativity jointly created by musician Brian Eno and painter Peter Schmidt, first published in 1975.

"I had this fantastic idea of what if people were just able to transport themselves across the places or events that separated them," Gibbard told writer Andy Greenwald on the song's genesis.

[7] Much of Gibbard's lyrics were composed during a "period of exile" when he was living in San Francisco,[12] house-sitting for John Vanderslice, the artist and owner of Tiny Telephone Studios.

"[11] The album emphasizes ambient noises, including "clicks, whooshes, and whirs";[11] the title track, for example, is built around the humming of an airplane engine.

[9] Its mood is often somber or dark, which Gibbard figured was an extension of his point of view in life: "I have this sense of realism that sometimes is a little depressing," he confessed to Magnet in 2003.

"[22] Kelefa Sanneh, writing for The New York Times, observed that an extension of the album's long-distance theme lies in each song's reliance "upon a single, fragile-sounding melodic line—a skein of broken guitar chords, a reverberating piano.

[25] Eric Gansworth, writing for At Length magazine, describes the album's inner sleeve: The striking image on the front cover, a soft-focus painting of a blackbird ensnared in some kind of blood-red string is simultaneously iconic and mysterious.

The interior booklet reveals an abundance of representational painting, collage and assemblage, visually echoing the album's themes with repeated imagery of red ropy tangles (reminiscent of anatomical textbook illustrations of arteries), blown electrical fuses, a humming bird, rendered in "outsider art" fashion, a spectral human figure ambiguously situated in roiling water, narrowly cropped photos of train cars, and other repeated elements, some at the abstract end of the spectrum and others falling closer to graphic design.

A figurative human hand, reminiscent of Adam's reaching out to God on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling, is also tangled in red tendrils.

Depending on how you hold the booklet, it either opens an expanse of several minimalist panel-spreads with superimposed lyrics, or is in sharp juxtaposition against the hummingbird, its needle-like bill replacing the hand of God.

The album leaked online before its release; Gibbard called this a "good thing," noting, "if anything I like the idea of normal people getting a chance to hear it before it comes out.

It was released physically on compact disc, double-LP vinyl, and cassette; additionally, the record saw digital distribution on the iTunes Store, which had debuted that year.

In addition to regular formats, Barsuk also issued a limited release for audiophiles on SACD,[14] the initial successor to CDs that purported to have higher audio quality and more storage.

Walla extolled the possibilities of the format in a profile for CMJ at that time: "I think on a really subconscious level, [SACDs make] music more compelling to listen to," he said.

In contrast to their previous live setups, which were simpler and more focused on the four instruments, the band made it a priority to include samplers to incorporate the soundscapes present on Transatlanticism.

[35] They were originally set to open for pop punk group Blink-182 that December,[36] but the band had to cancel as Gibbard developed a benign cyst on his leg that required surgery and a rest period.

[48] Rob Theakston of AllMusic wrote that Transatlanticism is "such a decadently good listen from start to finish" because of the band's maturity as songwriters and musicians.

Club, Stephen Thompson said the record "surpasses Gibbard's other career highpoints", calling it "a lush, impeccably produced, musically adventurous, emotionally resonant examination of the way relationships are both strengthened and damaged by distance".

[53] In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau cited "We Looked Like Giants" as a "choice cut",[54] indicating "a good song on an album that isn't worth your time or money".

[55] In 2011, Transatlanticism was named by NPR Music as one of the fifty most important recordings of the 2000s decade,[56] while Rolling Stone ranked it 57th on the magazine's decade-end list.

[58] In a retrospective piece that year, Entertainment Weekly's Kyle Anderson called Transatlanticism a "classic indie-rock album",[59] while Pitchfork editor Ian Cohen wrote, "few records open themselves up to forge those kind of moments, to be a formative emotional and listening experience, pushing you to feel what you're thinking (to flip a line from 'Lightness'), daring to be universal enough to allow you to see yourself in it.

In a cover story for Spin at that time, writer Andy Greenwald suggested that "Death Cab have found a way to communicate intimate, insular indie rock to the budding teen-emo overground".

The process to sign the band was a difficult, year-long affair; Atlantic had to buy out the rest of the quartet's Barsuk contract and pay that label for the remaining two albums it owed them.