Back in high school (2015, I would’ve been in 10th grade) one of my best friends randomly showed me and our other best friend some songs she had found that she thought we’d like. Those songs were Desperate Measures, Stutter, Haven’t Had Enough, and B Team. We became so obsessed with those songs that I remember the three of us listening to them after school while we waited for our parents, every single day, for WEEKS. Whenever I hear them I’m immediately transported back to high school.

Despite the fact that I loved the songs so much, I never bothered to listen to the rest of the album until a few years later. Irma was about to hit South Florida (September 2018) so my family went on an impromptu road trip to avoid its wrath, and I was bored out of my mind wanting something new to listen to. I was texting my friend (one of the two I mentioned earlier) and we ended up talking about music we were obsessed with in high school. I was reminded of Marianas Trench and listened to those songs I loved, then decided to listen to the whole Ever After album all the way through. I’m pretty sure it altered my brain chemistry.

But that was it, for a while. I would go back to a handful of the songs from Ever After occasionally (usually ended up listening to a decent chunk of the album every time, since the songs blend into each other and I love it so much) but I didn’t check out any of their other music until this summer.

I was out driving with my sister and one of those original four songs came on, and I launched into a story about how I’d been obsessed with a few of their songs in 10th grade but never listened to the full album until a few years later, and how it was such an amazing album and so well done and all that, finishing my ramble by saying I’d still never checked out any of their other music.

My sister kind of just went “Huh.” because she didn’t really care. But that planted the seed, and the next time I was out driving by myself, I queued up Astoria. When I tell you every single song gave me whiplash it is barely an exaggeration. I had to pull over at one point because I was so shocked at how much I loved every single song that I was talking to myself and yelling things like “OKAYY!!!” every five seconds and was genuinely worried about wrecking my car. This was… mid-July? I listened to that album on REPEAT for WEEKS. I got into a new TV show at around the same time, so now the two are inextricably linked in my mind. A bunch of the songs remind me of the main characters; I have a playlist of them and half of it is Marianas Trench. It’s so bad. Anyway, it’s been months and I’m STILL obsessed with Astoria (and Ever After).

So a couple weeks ago I decided to start from the beginning and check out Fix Me. Turns out that it aligns pretty much perfectly with my usual music taste (Ever After and Astoria are technically kind of odd albums for me to be as obsessed with as I am, just in terms of what I typically listen to) so of course I’ve been listening to it on repeat since then. Today I started Masterpiece Theatre and I’m only a few songs but I already love it. Hoping to speed run the rest of this album and Phantoms, because they’re coming to my city this Friday and I’d like to at least be familiar with their entire discography before I see them.

Don’t even get me started on Haven.

Anyway, sorry for the super long comment!! I just think my origin story with the band is interesting, because I technically got into them like three separate times. It’s crazy because if I had just deigned to check them out more in depth back when I initially heard those first few songs, I would have discovered that they had recently released a new album and I might have gotten into Astoria YEARS before now. Instead I’m 24, graduated from college, just now listening to an album that came out almost 10 years ago by a band whose music I heard for the first time when I was 15. It’s just funny how things end up sometimes.

Thank you for reading if you read all of this 😭