I remember being 12 years old, visiting my cousins, who lived in a large, old house overlooking a ravine. At one point I went upstairs to get something, and I was all alone on the top floor of the house as the muted sounds of everyone else enjoying themselves floated up from the distance outside. One of the bedrooms had its door open and a radio was playing from inside, and “Tonight Tonight” came on just as I was about to head back downstairs. When I heard the opening of the song, I stopped in the middle of the hall. I knew the song. I’d heard it a couple times before, and it was magical. I couldn’t just walk away from it—especially since this was before the internet and streaming and “on-demand” everything—because it was playing then, in that moment, just for me. So I stood there, alone on the quiet, dark top floor of the house, and I listened to the whole song as it emanated from the tinny speakers of an old alarm clock radio. I could still hear the sounds of people having fun in the distance below me, but it seemed worth missing out for a few minutes to spend that time in audial splendour.

I got the album not long after, and I would listen to it as I fell asleep at night, thinking about the wide and distant world beyond me, and remembering that day when I stood alone as that song entered my heart and stayed there.