OF MONTREAL

Taeko had never heard Arcade Fire until yesterday.

She doesn’t usually take note of the music I’m playing in the car, but as we drove to Costco everyone was strangely quiet. So quiet that I kidded myself that they were all listening intently.

“Then we think of our parents/Whatever happened to them?”

I imagined Lana and Sebastian sitting there in the second row of the minivan getting a chill up their little spines.

Taeko, though, was the first one to speak.

“What kind of music is this?”

I didn’t know how to answer that, and I told her so.

“I mean, what genre?”

Again. Um, OK: grandiose, gently avant rock that hitches up right close to the mainstream?

“Sounds like David Bowie,” she said.

Right, David Bowie. That’s basically what I meant.

She didn’t come out and say so, but I think she liked it…