Claude says:Death Cab's fourth album — recorded in leisurely five-day stretches after Gibbard's detour with the Postal Service — is a concept record about long-distance longing, built on ambience and instrumental sparseness that lets the somber ache breathe. You circled it for a few years (a handful of plays in 2006, 2007, 2008) before it finally clicked in December 2009, six years after release, and you've kept coming back: "Title and Registration," "The Sound of Settling," the sprawling title track, "A Lack of Color."