Summer Songs

A few years back, I mentioned to my friend that I was reading "Bell Jar" by Sylvia Plath, and he said: "in the dead of Chicago winter? be careful..." I hadn't considered the consequences of reading such a tempered book in such a vindictive climate, and then after about 50 pages I understood. I had to put it on the shelf for fear of ending up with the same fate as the author (although I figure I was safe since I had shut off my cooking gas a few months earlier).

But it got me thinking about how much the seasons have to do with the art that we experience; how we experience; and when we experience it. The 'Bell Jar' episode was a few seasons ago at this point and I have yet to revisit it. Not that it wasn't good book or Plath is a excellent writer (i actually prefer her prose to her poetry...and saying that, prefer her husband Ted Hughes work above both), but my friend was right: there are certain times for certain books. Of course, it's not like you're gonna read 'Bell Jar' sitting on the beach in Hawaii, so it seems there presents itself somewhat of a reader conundrum.

But alas, it's summer. And it seems like while everyone is compiling their summer reading list (why don't you people have a 'winter reading list' or an 'autumn reading list [which would no doubt include Whitman]?), I got to thinking about a seasonal treat that, I think, is much more profound than a few Oprah book club titles: the Summer Record.

We all have them. Those 'summer songs' or 'summer records' that just seem sunnier than the rest. They're the ones that remind of you of driving around in your car with the windows down and the volume up. Making out with a certain brunette on the public beach that closes at dusk. Getting drunk on drinks with wedges of lime. Ah, summer nights...

I'm lucky enough to have chosen a profession where I can pretty much hear anything I want to hear. If it's a record on an indie label; i can get my hands on an advanced copy. I know, I'm a bastard. Go ahead and say it. I just make and keep the right friends, that's all.

So several months ago I inquired to a certain friend about Band of Horses because I had been a HUGE fan of Carissa's Wierd(http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/artsentertainment/2002088364_nite12.html), a group sadly disbanded, but whose core members went on to form Band of Horses (i once proudly drove from Bellingham to Seattle in the spur of the moment to see Carissa's Wierd play an in-store at Sonic Boom one evening, and then turn right around and drove back after the set was over).

I liked the Band of Horses record a lot. It didn't blow me away, it wasn't revolutionary. They were not re-inventing the wheel. It was definitely derivitive of Built To Spill, The Shins, and My Morning Jacket. But the sentiments on the record were very cool and I responded to the somewhat antiquated notion of soft/loud dynamics that have sadly seem to have gone the way of healthy stock portfolios, doc martins, Hum, and other relics of the '90s.

It stayed in good rotation, but it didn't knock me out. But then somewhere along the line it made that jump that most "favorite records" seem to make. All of sudden, seemingly out of nowhere, you get it. You GET IT. Like a safe falling on your head in a Looney Tunes cartoon. Its what happens when a record exists in your head for awhile, but then somehow, at some moment, touches you. You're not quite sure how, or when it happened. Maybe before you weren't ready for it. Maybe you were ready for it now, as if it sat patiently in the waiting-room of your brain, reading a two-month old copy of Newsweek, waiting for its name to be called.

For me, this seemed to happen when the weather turned sweet and warm. All of a sudden, the Band of Horses record ("Everything All The Time", by the way) seemed fucking monumental. The songs are so beautiful; the arrangements so steeped in grandeur; the chiming, churning guitars seem to steam engine the songs, crescendoing them down the tracks. The songs are sad and lovely and full of possibility, and the album is perfectly timed (10 songs, 36 minutes) that you miss it even before its over, and want to repeat as soon as possible. Come to think of it, kind of like summer itself.