Thad Kopec’s music is the kind of stuff that makes you remember how alive you are. Like a sun-dappled forrest canopy or light reflected on rippling water, his new track captures a moving image. The soundscape is sparse only to let every instrument fully speak. Strings and horns arrive and depart within a frame, merging together and fragmenting in erratic waves, but they all have something equally important to say. "Second Best" is narrative, and the instrumentation is alive to it. If the song is about remembering yourself by making sense of the past, all the disparate sonic elements mesh so well because of the shared purpose of making a story. Kopec’s intuition is to make the unsconscious conscious, to make a pattern of the fragments of memory and dream. If you’re a fan of melancholy Sufjan Stevens-inspired folk that creates a space for reflection and self-discovery, this is what you’ve been looking for.
– Andrew Strader