They’re here for the thousands of bands flooding downtown Austin, Texas, for the annual South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival. The church is just another venue. And Sparhawk and his onstage buddies—the appropriately named Retribution Gospel Choir—is just another band. It’s only Thursday evening; it’ll be a long, grueling forty-eight hours before the festival wraps up on Sunday, March 16.

Musicophilia is a medical short-story book brimming with anecdotes about people’s musical afflictions and talents—their amusias, dysharmonias, dystimbrias, and synesthesias.

I’m standing in Williamsburg’s Black & White Gallery with a portable radio in my hands and a pair of headphones fit snugly in my ears.