I first saw Brooklyn-based neo-folk band Grizzly Bear perform almost exactly a year ago, back when they were still on tour with TV on the Radio, playing the downer to TotR’s upper. The pairing seemed an odd one, at least on R5’s neon-colored flyer, but that October night was the best kind of intoxicating and helped lodge Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House underneath my skin. Last night, I was reminded again why “Knife” was once my anthem for autumn: the quartet stunned a hushed crowd at the First Unitarian Church Sanctuary with their Beach Boys-style harmonies, ambient melodies and instrumental prowess, not to mention their sheepish charm. This is a band that still isn’t jaded: Renaissance musician Chris Taylor seemed genuinely happy and also a little bit embarrassed when my friend said “You guys were amazing!” after the show; singer-songwriter-guitarists Ed Droste and Daniel Rossen manned their own merch table, politely talking to every scarved girl and bearded boy who stopped by to blush and gush.

The Sanctuary was the perfect venue for Grizzly Bear’s croonings. Its notoriously good acoustics helped amplify the band’s musical talent; meanwhile, the high ceiling, pews, dusty chandeliers and dusky reds and blues of the room complemented nicely their haunted, uncanny sound. Ghostly and melancholy at times, breezy and whimsical at others, Grizzly Bear crescendoed and crashed, lilted and chanted, whistled, plucked, blew and hit. It sounds sexy in print, and, trust me, it was: a Grizzly Bear performance is nothing if not intimate, perhaps because the band exists in a world of their own, someplace half-real and half-supernatural. Listening to them play is like spending an afternoon in their part of the forest, lying in their sun, breathing in their smoke rings. Songs like the waltzy “Marla” and their cover of The Crystals’ “He Hit Me (It Felt Like a Kiss),” set to appear on their Nov. 5 Friends EP release, were utterly transporting.

Unfortunately, I missed most of opening act Beach House’s performance, but I didn’t miss the standing ovation they received from some of the seated. And I hung around outside of the Church long enough after the show had ended to see Rossen puffing away on a Marlboro Red and trying to shrug the cold. He looked just as struck as I felt. Like I said before, this is a band that still isn’t jaded. And that’s more warming than hot apple cider on a chilly afternoon. Keep that sheepish charm close, Grizzy Bear: the indie scene may love its share of pretentious jerks, but it makes its modest heroes.

Typically, I don’t believe in downloading music. I’m one of the last living people without an iPod and I proudly bring my eight-year-old Discman to the gym. I buy records and CDs and, yes, once in a blue moon, even cassette tapes, but rarely mp3s. And I’m not enough of a torrent nerd to know how to get the good stuff for free. Having said all of that, I paid $0 for the new Radiohead album and, holy fake plastic trees, does it feel good. Today is a day in the candy shop for me.

Ten days ago, the seminal indie rock band announced that they had completed their seventh studio album and that it would be released on Oct. 10th as a digital download (then, later, in December, as a nifty little $81 discbox). The beauty of it all: you can pay whatever you’d like for the mp3s. Radiohead isn’t currently signed to any record label and, with this gesture, they’re making a statement to the music industry (“We’re not in this for the money; we’re in this for the music”) and also to fans (“We understand that you don’t feel like paying for mp3s when you can get them illegally for free”). Other artists, including Jamiroquai and Oasis are rumored to be following suit.

In Rainbows is a stunning album, and I’ll be writing a more comprehensive review of it for the next issue of The Temple News. Let it be said, though: it’s simultaneously everything I expected and didn’t expect it to be. The songs are classic Radiohead, and some evoke the sounds of previous albums OK Computer, Kid A and Amnesiac (“Bodysnatchers” even brings me back, somewhat, to The Bends), but they’re also very modern and new. If this way of releasing music to the public is the wave of the future, then songs like “15 Step,” “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi,” “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” and the delightfully folky “Faust Arp” are tracks on the soundtrack of the future. Even at its most synthetic, In Rainbows feels eerily alive. Kind of makes you wonder if computers will someday develop the capacity to hold human emotion.

Personally, I think my laptop’s developed a bit of a crush on Thom Yorke. It won’t stop playing this album…