The Great Okkervil River Conspiracy of Spring ’07 was designed by my best friend to keep this band from my innocent ears. She banned them from car stereos and playlists and mix CDs for months in a determined campaign that climaxed with a grand live show in a shack in Providence, RI. See, she figured I’d hate them, and would boycott any pilgrimage to see them if their indie musings ever entered my orbit. Obviously, she was wrong. Maybe if I’d had time to absorb their music, I would have spent that wonderful show focussing more on Will Scheff and his posse of melody makers, and less on making out with the random cute bearded boy (although then I suppose that whole weekend in Connecticut would never have happened…), but in the end, I didn’t take this band to heart until my next trip across the Atlantic in the Fall.

It was October, and a book of mine didn’t sell—as books of mine are wont to do sometimes. I took my iPod and the dull ache in my chest and slipped into a bookstore full of wood and crimson sweatshirts and a sweeping staircase. There was a corner upstairs I tucked myself into, surrounded by all those books that had sold, and I wrapped myself in Will and his plaintive stories and waited for the pain to ease a little. It took a while, and a few tears, but I suppose it did, because that’s just the way it goes. But I remember the intensity, of his prose and my small grief, and this recent rooftop serenade makes it all seem like yesterday.

Also, this Modern Love distils all the reasons why I try not to date a) indie hipsters and b) musicians into one neat tale of dude-ish casual incompetence. Unfortunately, Montreal seems to have nothing but, so I might have to relax that one…