I think I'm in love. And right when I least expected it, too. I stupidly slept on your two 2008 albums (Hold On Now, Youngster... and We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed!), left them sitting on my desk for months. What can I say? Sometimes you're just not in the right place for an album to really hit you. But a few weeks ago, I gave them both another spin in preparation for writing a little blurb about your show last week at Neumos, and I have become unreasonably, overwhelmingly smitten. I've listened to almost nothing else ever since.

I love your faux-shambolic, incredibly kinetic, catchy, bursting-at-the-seams sound, full of keyboard and glockenspiel hooks, violin shredding, wild rhythmic turns, and noisy/messy guitars that are actually measured and spot-on. But the lyrics—and the singing—are what really kill me: the cutesy reference points (K Records! Stationery! Literature! LiveJournal!); the wonderfully melodramatic moods; the free-associative, nonsensically tumultuous word games; the alternating boy-girl-sung-solo/screamed-by-the-whole-gang delivery. It's all spiteful, romantic doom and gloom broken by these moments of maybe happiness and new love and getting lost in music, and I love all of it so very much. I'm breathless.

And you were pretty much perfect last Friday night at Neumos, just as cute and nerdy and energetic onstage as you sound on record, totally fulfilling and surpassing my every giddy expectation, screaming and jumping into the crowd and basically just exploding all over the stage without ever missing a beat. I pogo'd, I shouted along to the shouty parts ("Shut up!" "HAHAHA!" "Shout at the world..." etc.), I danced, I sweated out more beer than I have at a show for a long time. I felt like a dumb, romantic kid again.

You mentioned how much you guys like Seattle. You recorded your last album here with John Goodmanson (with whom you're presently recording your new one, breaking just for this tour); you apparently have lots of friends here, like Poster of the Week favorite Carlos Ruiz, who designed your T-shirts, as well as ex-Seattleite Zac Pennington, whose Parenthetical Girls you've toured with; you mentioned having eaten at vegan restaurant Bamboo Garden and having gone to the Funhouse the night before to see everyone's favorite band Wavves (your guitarist was sporting their Wipers-logo-swiping T-shirt). You introduced the excellent song "Miserabilia" by saying that, since you were all so fond of Seattle, you would play us a song about how "each and every one of us is going to die alone," which I thought was sweet. ("Miserablia" was when the disco ball lit up and started spinning.) Well, let me unofficially say: Seattle likes you, too. So how about you just move here once the new album's done so you can play Neumos like every month? Cardiff, Wales, is so, so far away, and you know how these long-distance relationships can go. Anyways, just think about it.

Yours,

Eric