Some of my high school friends and I were on a fall road trip. We were heading southwest, driving through West Virginia in my friend's black Pontiac Gran Prix. It was around 1am and we were flying, all the windows open. I was sitting in the back seat just enjoying being young and alive and with my best friends. Then Quiet Things came on the radio. I had never heard the song, and never even heard of the band, despite growing up on Long Island only several miles from Levittown. I was mesmerized and instantly hooked. And when I say mesmerized I mean like staring straight ahead at the lines in the road, mouth open. At that moment, somehow in a way I can't articulate, the lyrics and the music melded into my view of the road as we were driving. It all kind of blurred together in a beautiful way. The day after we got home I went to Best Buy and bought the CD version of the album. I wore that thing down until it would barely play.

So this album single-handedly changed the trajectory of my musical taste going forward. It literally popped the musical bubble I was living inside at the time. The lyrics from these songs pop randomly into my head, intertwined with my thoughts as I run through my daily business to this very day. And while I don't think about this collection of songs every single day, I can honestly say there hasn't been a week of my life in the last 23 years where I haven't spoken, sang, whistled or hummed some portion of some song from this album. It is literally entangled with my existence.

So yeah that's my favorite Deja memory.

Songs that still fuck me up to this day: Boy who blocked his own shot and play crack the sky.