A Minor is the saddest chord. For this and more, Rachael Pollard is exactly right.

Three years ago I was sitting in the dark on the dirty floor at Monkey Mania. In front of the stage was a messy array of bodies sitting cross-legged in the half-light – their heads all tilted upward. Never before this night, or since, have I seen a group of punk rock shirts sitting so quietly, or with such reverence. The usually chaotic warehouse was, in this hour, fixated only on the stunning sound coming from the stage.

Sitting on a stool with only a guitar, a microphone stand and a backwash of light was a girl named Rachael Pollard.

I was timid then. After the show I had no reason to approach her. So I asked Amy Fantastic. I asked Josh Taylor. I asked anyone: Who was that girl?

I hadn’t heard of Rachael Pollard before that night and it would take me three years of questions and inquiry to hear from Rachael Pollard again. For the subsequent time in-between my introduction to this ghostly girl and seeing her figure in the world again, I asked around. The answers I received were mostly in tune with: No, she doesn’t play out much. No, she doesn’t have any recordings.

Now, a lifetime and an intimate reintroduction later, I am sitting in the dark again – this time with a series of recorded songs. And I am thinking that I may be listening to the best singer and songwriter in Denver. The mysterious Rachael Pollard: The best? Yes.

Honestly, I don’t know how to measure greatness. I just know it when I hear it. But the thing is that, with Rachael Pollard, it’s not that strict of a sensation. No, take a listen and it requires more than just ears. More than a mouth. More than the right equation. It requires something that you may not even have a name for.

Complex, spacious and chiming with a ghostly air, Pollard’s music is everything that one could ask from a musician. Her songs are honest, complicated, poignant, and even funny. Each sounds as though it came both from the most overwhelmingly sad, and the most reverent place in the human condition. Each of her pieces feel as though they were composed sitting atop a loved one’s tombstone in some dreamy oceanside graveyard. In the dark, I picture Pollard and her guitar peering down and into the sea, keeping watch over the millions of desolate acres beyond the horizon, with her haunting voice mourning each square yard. But, in reality, my little image of her couldn’t be further from the truth.

Dreamy, yes. But in a graveyard, no.