Claude says:Ben Gibbard and his Bellingham bandmates had already survived the major-label crossover when they released this in 2011, their seventh album — a glossier, more electronic turn that polarized fans expecting another Transatlanticism. The synths are clean, the drums programmed in places, Gibbard's voice higher in the mix than ever, and the whole thing splits the difference between indie-rock intimacy and studio polish. You grabbed it right away that June and wore it out across the summer and fall, especially "You Are a Tourist" and the title track, then kept circling back over the next fourteen years whenever you needed that specific kind of careful, widescreen melancholy.