We used to sit in the dugout of the baseball field, him and I. He would put his arm over my shoulder, teach me how to hold a guitar, chuckle a bit when my hands weren’t quite big enough to bar the fret. Sometimes, a dog would come around barking with its owner on a walk or a dad would start coaching his son in the graceful art of pitching, and we’d stay there, rambling about Hollywoo in Bojack Horseman or trying to sing “Say You Won’t Let Go” together. I knew that morning dew would eventually turn to dust-speckled sweat, that I would stand on the grass and watch him drive away soon enough, that we would only ever be clichés that would last the run time of a movie, but I didn’t care. I could’ve stayed that way….forever.

This is how company feels, in life and in song: an “everything i wanted” intro with the exact opposite dream of love instead of loneliness, “Paris in the Rain” without needing to be in Paris or soaked in rain (“Summer in the Suburbia”, maybe?), the warmth of 9AM in the summer and hands in your pocket trying not to laugh too loud or talk too fast, gazes only the two of you will ever remember, and songs you’ll never truly be able to remember without seeing the one you shared them with. “I’m fine with just you and your company,” Annie Dang sings on top of syncopated percussion and lo-fi guitars before the production becomes stripped down to finger snaps and nervous synths. You can almost imagine her singing it beneath the shade of a tree on a picnic blanket painted with the light of the sun’s gentle fingers: “Everything I need……is your company.”