At nearly 30 years old, I don’t want to be here. In line with about 200 teen-emo fans waiting to pile into Philly’s Trocadero, covered in the stink of spring-time Chinatown. And me, without my black eyeliner or apathetic slouch. I drove two hours for this. I sat in the car on the PA turnpike rolling the album over in my head planning Ian Metzger’s defining rockstar moment for him. I’d never seen them live, but headlining a four-act set half-way across the country means that someone appreciates Dear and the Headlights, no?

Hundreds of grumpy teen girls, their angry older boyfriends, and a few polite parents all seem to disagree: Dear and the Headlights are the opening act. Like…the first of three opening acts. No one here has even heard of them before tonight. The stars of this show are Plain White T’s. Don’t ask me why.

As an opener, Dear and Headlights deliver the kind of legendary set for which Radiohead fans pine. (Didn’t Radiohead once open for Alanis Morissette?) Imagine the OK Computer days relived through red-faced lyrics spat like turpentine from the tongue, acrid. The keyboard suffers a pounding, while the guitarists’ knees could give at any moment under the weight of this lush, fierce musical wall. Drums drop with a steady kick, and knock the feet out from under the rest of the band, drowned down to silence, and a whispered, sweaty Mr. Metzger purrs a lyric like: “See the gray in your hair, angel/Your beauty can’t be covered by insecurity.” Knock knock. Who’s there? The rest of the band. But they’re not just at the door, they are busting it down to wash over the stage in a deluge of spastic fits.

Then on to another stellar example of what’s right with music again, and every single body on that stage pulses with the keyboards and beats while the guitarist gains his footing anew and Metzger stands solid, lock-kneed yet thrusting a heel into the floor. Something has to give. He steps up the register. His voice steadily climbing up the ladder of keys.

“In this act I’ll disguise those dead eyes, stretch tight the lips, a glistening gum line. Mouth curtains pulled I shine. My yellow stage light smile distracting dancing puppets on short saliva strings.”

The build is obvious, you can tell you’re being played by the expertly raw (yet secretly choreographed?) melodrama of the band, and you love it. The crescendo is expected, but much better than you’d hoped.

“I wish I had a single thought the least bit legitimate enough to open up my mouth and spit accuracy. It’s getting easy.”

This is Joe Cocker in his heyday. Counting Crows before they became too cool to be cool anymore. This is what Blind Melon could have been with about two more years and one more great album. And the sad fact remains: no one is listening.

So if you’re Ian Metzger, how would you feel about having poured your heart into your first official debut effort at the request of the fans only to find no real fans waiting at the end of that long labor of love? You (now you’re Ian, remember) have read all of the hype that the Internet has created around you, and judging by the looks you’re giving me, you don’t even know that you’ve created 2007’s first indie-pop, guilty-pleasure masterpiece.

And after all of the smoke and mirrors, you show up in Philly to play six songs to a room full of teens who came to see a one-trick pony scream through a set of jarring noise and then to disappear having made not even a ripple in the pool of musical relevance.

Let me recap the irony: you’ve made something amazing that people begged for, only to crawl out of your studio, hit the road, and find that no one anywhere seems to care.

I’ll make that my job. Just step back, leave the work of “caring” to me. It’s okay. I’m a professional.

(I’ll start off easy on you:) Dear and the Headlights is kind of a dumb name. The album, Small Steps and Heavy Hooves could use a better name too.

(Now I’ll let you get comfortable:) This album doesn’t do anything spectacularly new. Take Adam Duritz’s writing chops, Alanis Morrisette’s inability to emphasize the proper syllable, and Ben Folds’ hypermelodic tendencies. Sew all of these limbs together and you’ll have a ragdoll of jangly guitars and plaintive howls, too sweet to bear for more than two consecutive days and too heartfelt to share with your friends.

(And now I’ll drop the clincher:) Dear and the Headlights are a limp-necked ragdoll sold in a country store at a price much lower than its collectible quality should ever warrant. They are a secret on the shelf, and you’d be lucky to get out of the store paying the woefully low sticker price. I mean, it’s a joke, right? I could resell this damn thing on eBay instantly and make a profit, no?

“Oh No”, the first track drags you into a pool of pop confection, sweeter than cotton candy, stickier than the Pepsi syrup leaking from the box tubed up to the soda fountain at Wendy’s. Off to a slow start, the song quickly lifts up and pounces in no time. An insecure anthem, guilt-ridden. You’ll get to the end of the song not sure if you should tell someone how much you enjoyed it.

“Oh no, I thought I had a feeling, I watched ‘em fasten the noose, I wonder what to do.” This is the unsteady foot we step out on. This is the dizzy feeling of falling down. This is the instability of not knowing. This is the embarrased naivete of admitting by track two that what we were falling into was love.

And track two does kick in hard and heavy, radio-ready, a single if there ever was one. “Sweet Talk” is what Adam Duritz meant to do when he made “Angel of the Silences.” Take the guitar, make it electric, now squeeze every ounce of apology out of your voice until you almost sound sure of yourself. Understand completely and fully what makes a pop song good, and don’t rely too heavily on just one aspect of that. Now wear your audience down, like a sandblaster, until there’s nothing left of them to do the dirty deed of disliking.

“Don’t take it personal personal honey,” Ian wails, and you can’t. Dear and the Headlights just can’t help that they are that good. Do you blame the entire box of Swedish Fish for being so damn tasty that you had to polish them off in one sitting? Is it the fault of the candy that your stomach feels kind of funny? Or is your own lack of self-control to blame? Glutton.

Problem is that almost every song here is not just great, but stunning.

There, I’ve said it. I’ve outed myself. I’m a fan against all odds. On an average day, I’d estimate that one out of every two indie fans feels a pang of guilt or regret for letting a radio hit leak its way into his/her starved heart. Admit it, we’ve started to believe our own hype! Maybe we need to come to terms with the fact that a song doesn’t have to be obtuse, or described by some e-zine or post-millenial, downtempo blog as “angular” in order for us to like it. Some things are completely, unbearably lovable. Dear and the Headlights fall into this category.

They are here to prove that everything about piano pop that works (a major key on an off beat) can be mixed with the best things about post-punk (the grandeur of a full-throated howl), and even a few (don’t admit it, don’t even say it) emo tricks (the simplicity of heavy-hearted, confessional lyrics) can exist harmoniously within a layered, yet still accessible, and even…ahem…mature album.

The album does have it all: you’ve got your fist-pounding arena-fillers (“It’s Gettin’ Easy”), your slow-drug, epic masterpieces (“Midwestern Dirt”), you’ve got an appeal to all children of the eighties (“Skinned Knees and Gapped Teeth”), and even a frightening jaunt into the realm of aggressively-gushing love songs (“I Just Do”).

I don’t want to have to remind anyone how bad Pablo Honey seemed at first. Or how ridiculous the name Radiohead once was. Or how long The Bends sat on shelves before someone began to care.

Do you care yet?

I’ll keep going — for your sake as well as mine. At some point, as Ian and the boys in this guitar/piano driven band can attest, you hit the wall of musical invention in recreating a form to perfection. This is an album of singles. August and Everything After without the drag-me-downs like “Ghost Train.”

Even before this album truly takes…and it will, I am confident in saying that we can expect even bigger things next. Expect a sophomore album that carries their pop-sensibility to the next level while decimating all artificially lowered expectations. Expect the sky to explode in a joyous Skittles riot of musical enlightenment. It’s true. I’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, my friends, and the music beckoned, and every croon, wail (gutteral or high-pitched), every slightly echoed effect over Mr. Metzger’s most honest vocals (“Run in the front, like you said/I’m sad I’ll miss it send it back in the photographs/And I could use a vacation myself/My eyes are bored”) have been etched into memory. I’m mad with it. My mind wakes up humming their infectious melodies. I catch myself alone in my office trying to recreate the tempo of certain off-kilter incantations from the lyric book and I can’t quite do it, so I have to go back to listening. If there is a vaccine to prevent against this insanity, I’d suggest you not get it. If there is an effective cure for my disease, I will not take it. Not willfully, not under duress. I will refuse treatment against doctor’s orders, and I will happily suffer the consequence…utter madness or worse: death of my indie ego.

And maybe I’m not okay anymore. And maybe these 13 songs, making allusions to Teddy Ruxpin and Guns ‘N Roses, are here to remind us all as fans of independent music what unquenchable thirst brought us to this salt-water lake in the first place. Maybe these 13 songs will matter to us at first because they appeal to the contrarian in all of us. I mean, what in our world is more satisfying than finding a band to love which, as of yet, remains unloved?

Dear and the Headlights Official Site
Equal Vision Records