The goalie's anxiety at the penalty kick
Ways of Hearing

Ways of feeling, ways of listening.
There are ways of perceiving that you begin to understand when you are already “grown up,” when you find yourself in situations that develop senses and perceptions you were unaware of until just a few days before, if not through hearsay. You begin then to feel through eye contact, through small gestures produced by a little being that didn’t even exist a few months ago. You get lost in deep brown eyes, so different from yours and yet so familiar because in them you see the person with whom you vowed to spend your life. An unusual way of feeling, an unknown language that you learn day by day, made of glances, searches, mute understanding, and reassurance, a simple yet tremendously challenging language because it is deep, it is innate, but you had forgotten it.
Little hands that search for you when those big eyes don’t see you, or simply don’t find themselves in yours. You work on your pc, absorbed in your thoughts, when you feel a gentle tug on your pants: you look down, and there are those eyes again calling you and asking for a bit of attention. Little hands that search for you when those eyes are afraid, need reassurance, when they ask you: “dad, is it okay, can I trust you?” And you try to respond as best as you can, with contact, with words, scrambling as best you can, hoping that the little being in front of you understands what you mean.
It took me eight months to realize that someone was talking to me, it took me eight months to learn to feel beyond the cries, the nighttime awakenings and the tantrums, it took me eight months to realize that there are other ways of feeling and other ways of listening, but it's damn well worth it.
It’s titled “Ways of Hearing,” the latest work from the Americans The goalie’s anxiety at the penalty kick. A bizarre name that immediately caught my attention. I don’t remember how I stumbled upon this Philadelphia-based band, but the photo on their Bandcamp, even before the description, already spoke to me: an out-of-focus photo of six simple, smiling kids in the yard of a house, and the inscription below, “music for winter,” an invitation to wedding for my late autumnal romantic sensibility. I press play and the magic begins: emo (the sweet, whispered, arpeggiated kind), indie, instrumental post-rock, all those genres that accompanied me in the early 2000s, immediately resurfacing in ten delicate tracks as thin as a ray of sunshine on a chilly winter’s day, capable of reaching the heart and warming better than a summer day. Brand New, There Will Be Fireworks, Empire! Empire!, Carissa’s Wierd, these and others are the names that come to mind as the songs flow quickly, time passes, and I find myself reflecting on how much my life has changed lately.
An incredible album, winning you over with sweet words, hugs, and warmth, something I was missing and that I needed to translate into music many emotions that were far too dormant.