Some songs you hear many times over, in different locales throughout the city you live in. You’re wearing different clothes, you’re with people or alone, it’s night or it’s day–and the song repeats because it is, for a short while, the ONLY song. Months or years pass, and out of this assortment of listening experiences, your memory locks onto one in particular. You can’t even say why. There was just this specific day and time, an angle of the sun, a singular tightness in a certain muscle group, burning bright right then, right there.
It’s nothing you can put your finger on, but let’s say the moment your memory picks is the Moment You Knew The Song Was Perfect. And I mean “perfect” in a sort of non-permanent way, of course; we all agree there’s no such thing as a perfect song. But at the same time, if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you believe in the myth as strongly as I do.
So it was springtime in Chicago in 2001, and I was answering phones at a construction company. A new Cosco was having a grand opening across the street; they were giving out $25 gift certificates if you joined for $50. I had New Pornographers’ Mass Romantic in the walkman. I didn’t really see what everyone was hyping them for, but there was this ONE song that really got my engine going. I got off at 5, programmed the discman for #6, and walked across the street. About halfway through the sprawling Cosco parking lot, this song’s Moment came. I could try to explain exactly how “Letter from an Occupant” sounds–starting with the word “catchy,” I’m sure–but you’re either already familiar with it…or it’s my sincere hope that you soon will be. Still there is, towards the end of the verse/chorus rollercoaster, an almost off-track breakdown wherein Neko Case sings, most fittingly, of how it’s “the song, the song, the song that’s shaking me.” That’s what I remember.
