Dear Grand Archives ^[1],

I think you probably already know this, but I sort of love you.

I was pretty sure this was going to get serious when I first heard your demo. As I’ve said before, I’d go see Matt Brooke play if it was just him and a guitar singing the phone book, but these songs were something special. I liked how the layered harmonies and slowly building songs made my spine tingle. And then you played your first show, at Neumos [mb ^[2]], and though you fell a few songs short of a full set and faltered a couple of times, I was pretty much gone.

I fell a little more in love with you on Wednesday, flying back from Utah, listening to “Sleepdriving” over and over a mile above mountains slowly losing their cloak of snow to the spring.

And then there was last night at the Crocodile. I was a little surprised to see that the room didn’t sell out, considering how much everyone’s been talking about you, and I figured that anyone with both sense and ears would be there. (I was glad to see a bunch of people I knew there. My people, anyway, have sense and ears. I knew you did, guys.) Touring with Modest Mouse seems to have done you good–the rounds that you were singing didn’t slip once, everything overlapping and building and making my spine tingle all over again. The people behind me were whispering, “Have you heard these guys before?” “No.” “They’re really good!” “I know!” You made me want to hug everyone around me and then hop in a car and drive for days, and you even played a full set.

It was pretty adorable that you were “out of sorts” from your tour. Out of sorts is clearly the new rock thing to be at the Crocodile. (See also: Central Services ^[3] last Friday.) And instead of doing an encore you just played a couple more songs and joked about encores. This is another new trend in shows that I like so much.

What I’m trying to say, Grand Archives, is that you’re one of my favorite things about music so far this year, and I hope we never part. Please stay away from saxophones ^[4].

Love,

Samantha