Lyrically, the album touches on themes of love, as well as fame, history, and friendship. On both "Give Up" and "Transatlanticism", the Death Cab for Cutie album released the same year, Gibbard lyrically explores distance and "the ability of relationships to survive ." Gibbard noted that only "District", "Brand New Colony", and "This Place is a Prison" were the only strictly autobiographical songs: "Everything else is just kind of daydreaming and coming up with ideas for songs that aren't necessarily based in reality, and I think that was a lot more fun for me to do because I'd never really done that before," he said in 2002. Alexia Loundras of the BBC observed that the album offers a melancholy but hopeful sentiment. Portions of "Give Up" were inspired by the break-up of what Gibbard called his "first real adult relationship." The split occurred because of how much time Gibbard devoted to music. Afterwards, his former partner relocated to Washington, D.C., which inspired "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight".