When you’re parched and dehydrated and take that first drink of cool water, you can feel it slide down your sandpapered throat like a tingling balm to soothe your thirst. That’s what it felt like to listen to Anathallo’s “All the First Pages” yesterday, a relatively bad day. Fate got fidgety, wanted to spice things up, so it decided to burn me. Literally: my morning coffee in a new thermos dropped not down my throat but onto my tan khakis as I drove to work. Cosmically: I inadvertently parked the car on the wrong side of the street, the ticket-earning side. And relationally: the night before was a bumpy one with my fiancee. Words laid down gently transformed into a landmine. We got through it—we always do—and we’re sitting here this morning enjoying our daily cup of coffee (in mugs). But redemption began with a song.