Aughts Songs: #8 Death Cab For Cutie - "Debate Exposes Doubt" from The Photo Album ('01)

This is one of the best guitar songs of the decade. I can't think of another song that made as much of an impression on me in terms of ideal guitar arrangement. Two chimey parts, playing occasional notes outside the scale, and almost no true chords. One of two excellent Death Cab songs that lyrically take place inside a restaurant, the theme here is big and romantic, and is typically Gibbardian. It's always sounded cooler to me than all of his other lyrics. There's a little bit more of an edge to this, more menace in his "choked" stare than any other DCFC song I can think of. It's possible that this song had an unfair advantage over the rest of the album because when I only had a burned copy back in '01, this song cut out after 10 seconds. So I ended up waiting until the actual album came from Barsuk to really spend as much time with this song as I had with the rest. Along with "Coney Island," it always sounds a little bit fresher than the rest of the album. Even after nine years, it's a song I haven't begun to get sick of.