I laughed at first when I saw the note on Pitchfork about the Lucksmiths. I figured Pitchfork must have it wrong, what do they know about the Lucksmiths? So I checked their website and slowly, grudgingly, I read their “sad message to all our friends”. How could it be true? They were going strong with a killer new album. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. It really was the last thing I expected to read in the late afternoon. I put on “The Cassingle Revival” and sang along wholeheartedly with the line “I spent this afternoon nostalgic for this morning.”

A lot of crises develop when your favorite band reaches its demise. Is it really dead? What about a reunion in the future? Will I have to decide who my favorite current band is now? And the biggest question…will I go see their final show? That’s the tough one at the moment as their final show is planned for Melbourne, Australia, their hometown. Hey, tickets are only $850 round trip, never going to get a better price than that. And imagine the last show of any band, think of how many songs they’ll play! All the old favorites and rarities, man it would be brilliant.

The Lucksmiths have been my favorite band for about four years now. Those four years were my musically formative years and this band shaped those as much as any. I can still pinpoint nearly the second that I first heard “Great Lengths” on KEXP on an afternoon home alone in high school. I wrote their name down on a scrap of paper and the next time I was at the record store I bought every Lucksmiths release they had. Since then, I’ve fleshed out my collection to physical copies of every release and I’ve never heard a song I didn’t like. I’ve seen them twice. Twice in a weekend in the fall of 2007 in New York. It was wonderful.

It’s odd that a pop band opened my musical horizon, but they did. Without them I don’t know who I would be. It is a sad day indeed. But they existed and Tali, Marty, Mark, and Louis go about their lives. And the simple beauty they created with clever words and touching music is still out there to be discovered.

P.s. If you don’t know the Lucksmiths, start with Warmer Corners, available at the Matinee website.