Auditorium :: "Sunday"

Will Sheff's "The Presidents Dead" remains one of the best (and weirdest) weekend songs of all time, describing the dilating wake up; bacon hissing, coffee great, spring on the wind, all against the backdrop of a fictional assassination. Auditorium opens "Sunday" with a similar lyric, "Sunday, we woke up and you made us coffee/I don't tend to drink it/but everything that touches your hands/is slowly becoming the things that I want and need to be part of the plan." This is, of course, not love in a time of loss, but rather love on Prospect Park West, where the city sings and skies open up with the massing crowd, one that we imagine is now moving and singing in time. Opening whistles evoke a Chutes Too Narrow-era Shins but Auditorium spins something far more baroque and layered. The instrumentation boils down to compartmentalized acoustic guitar progression with the fireworks taking the form of three and four part vocal harmonies. Think of Fleet Foxes directed to singing original a cappella arrangements in the archway of their college dormitory, and, oddly enough, this is a compliment to Auditorium's throw back pop. Blinking awake, scents of coffee from the kitchen, sun blazing optimism through the curtains, it only takes 2:03 to realize how perfect this all is.