"Gibbard doesn't shy away from all of the issues familiar to a modern American urbanite, musing about gentrification and loves old and new, all from a vantage point of somebody who is comfortable about where he's at but knows what's been lost. This results in an album where the melancholy is bittersweet, not all-consuming, which means Thank You for Today is softly reassuring even when its intent is lightly barbed"

"The melodies are gorgeous, never overdone but always foregrounded: you would get almost nothing from the individual elements, from the bass, the guitar, the keyboards and the voice, but they add up to much more than the sum of their parts. It's not that it sounds like 80s adult rock, but there's something of artists like Bruce Hornsby and the Range here - something welcoming and accepting that feels awfully appealing"

"The ninth album from Ben Gibbard and Co. is their strongest album of the 2010s, a dubious achievement that nonetheless deserves recognition for its rare moments of shining, indie-pop songwriting"