The Golden Band | Pitchfork

It was late at night, as things usually are. I was driving across Nebraska. There was a thunderstorm in the distance, directly in front of me. The land was dark and empty, but the sky was full of pink and orange flashes. I was listening to the radio, but not so much as I was listening to the violent bursts of static that accompanied the lightning. Perhaps Nebraska is used to such sights, but I come from a place where you don’t have weather like this. To me, it was beautiful and frightening. At some point, the radio suddenly fell quiet. No crackling, no late-night call-in show, nothing. The silence may have lasted for hours as I just kept driving toward the thunderclouds, watching them pulse with warm light. I only noticed it had been silent when the music began playing: soft brushed drums patting out a laid-back, but propelling groove above warm, soothing chimes. I felt the car begin to accelerate, even though I wasn’t pushing any harder on the gas pedal. And then— well, you’re gonna call me crazy for this, but I swear this is what happened— when the singing started, just as soft and smooth as the music, I felt the car slowly lift up. Off the ground.

I remember this review in particular because sometime in high school, Kevin and I drove back from some show in Austin probably around 4am, when Kevin popped in the record and told me how he thought the review was apt. This was back when all Pitchfork reviews were interpretive works which described how the music made the critic feel, so this piece didn’t really stick out in particular to me. Around that time, I didn’t know too much about the American Analog Set. Kevin and I saw them play after Explosions one night, but we bounced out after Explosions played. We stuck around to hear a few songs and we weren’t too entertained. I remember thinking that the American Analog Set had better be a pretty good band to release a record with a title as audacious as The Golden Band, and so they had some mystique around them in my mind. I put the record back on today after having not heard it in years because the CD’s all scratched. I guess my DVD player has good error correction because it’s playing all these old, scratch CDs that my car player can’t handle. Anyway, my apartment didn’t lift off the ground, but when A Schoolboy’s Charm came on, I was all like, Oh yeah…