The other day, my mother and father were over for something like a potluck brunch, to celebrate a birthday. It's not often that I'm around my parents at breakfast time anymore. It used to be that there was no choice, living - as it were - in the same house together for through high school and that final college summer. Long story short, it had been a while since I'd heard my father discuss the merits of any of the various breakfast foods or drinks that were made available that morning or any morning. The first thing he was barking about the other day were the cherries that were too sour. His lips were puckered tightly as he drew the stem from his clenched teeth. It still didn't stop him from reaching down to his plate and pulling another, perhaps thinking that they couldn't all be so tart and tangy. But they were. Some were just worse than the others. He kept eating them though, a true glutton for punishment.
What came next though was important. He came into the house, poured a glass of orange juice from the carton on the counter and - without even tasting it - started wondering about the contents. "Is this the orange juice you bought the other day?" he asked my mother, with a seriousness in his tone. "Whatever that orange juice was, that's the one. That's the one you get from now on. It's the one. Don't get anything else. Is this it? If it is, it's the one you keep getting." The ramble was authoritative and one got the sense that he was once and for all putting his foot down on any and all orange juice decision-making that was ever going to be done on his behalf for the rest of his days. It was dumb and yet, still somewhat impressive, only because there had been something so good and so refreshing in that juice he'd had that he couldn't keep his mind off it. He wanted nothing else. It might have given him the same feeling that a Veronica Falls song can give.
Yes, I'm very sure that the London band could remind most people of that orange juice experience of my father's. They could immediately touch upon the band's salt water spray and day on the beach vibe as something that should be bottled and indulged upon at the very first crack of dawn and it should be indulged upon at as many cracks of dawn as possible.