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While we are on the topic of Radiohead, I wanted to mention that they released their seventh studio album In Rainbows in October of 2007. It was a surprise masterpiece with it being so late in the game for a band, an album layered with so many twists and turns and textures that it demands the audience keep up while simultaneously requiring them to be patient enough to have its brilliance revealed in tiny and unanticipated bites. Were that every album could cast this kind of spell.

I had it playing on repeat on a small Bluetooth speaker in the hospital room while giving birth to Marlo almost two years later, and at one point as the album entered its last third I gripped Jon’s hand as if channeling all of the pain into his arm. Suddenly and without warning I disappeared into his palm and entered what I can only describe as an otherworldly, sacred realm where nothing existed but me and my body.

The following song was playing as all of this happened.

“House of Cards”

Three years after Marlo’s birth one of my best friends who was a fiery redhead from Oakland, California introduced me to the following song. While I was listening to it for the first time I had the distinct thought that if I had been making a mixtape for someone I would have sequenced it exactly like I am doing so here.

The Jezebels – “Easy to Love”