Album: Death Cab for Cutie, Codes and Keys (Atlantic)

Codes and Keys comes illustrated with a close-up photo of the hash key from a phone booth, a sight which, for any Brit, brings a Proustian whiff of stale urine. Fortunately, DCFC's latest is fragrant in a more pleasing way.

By Ben Gibbard's own admission "a much less guitar-centric" record than usual, it is therefore, if only by default, the closest thing yet to a follow-up to Give Up by Gibbard's other concern, the Postal Service, although it's more about pretty pianos than effervescent synths.