Just for posterity’s sake, I thought that I would lay down some notes on the  albums of my summer (since no one besides my posterior cares what I am listening to… well my ears care… and my heart… and head… but they are all invested in my posterior… and posterity for posterity’s sake).

Ahem.

I just remember driving across the trestle from Everett to Marysville in 1997 and the Sundays’ Static & Silence had just come out.  Tamara & I had just moved to Bellingham and things seemed freshly laundered and crisply laid out.  That was an anthemic summer album for me… although it was released in the fall.  To me, it IS driving North. That album defines a portion of time to me and it is always fun when that happens.

This year there are some contenders for summer album.  A six pack exists at the moment, the first of which being Veckatimest by Grizzly Bear.  Coming off of a flirtation with the Fleet Foxes my ears were primed for what I found contained therein.  The album sounds like it is pouring out of a tin can that used to contain peaches in heavy syrup… the mixture still clinging to the ribs of the can as the noise filters out.  Everything I read compares them to Animal Collective and points out the Pet Sounds pedigree yadda yadda.  I hear lots of Disneyana and the Cocteau Twins sent away to summer camp.  They break into a music hall, dust off the modge podge of instruments and belt some tunes from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young catalog while standing beneath a poor taxidermized moose on the dusty bear skin rug…  get it!  I full circled to the image of a grizzly bear… I am just good like that.  I like this album a lot although I like it as a whole and not for any one or two bits.

The other newcomer to my sonic paint palette is Deerhoof.  In my ignorance and uncouth desire to parent and live I somehow grew up stunted and ignorant of the San Francisco treat’s existence.  I love to let things grow on me and they do just that.  they are difficult.  Challenging.  In some ways they are awfull.  Which is exactly why they are such a good use of my time.  I cannot ignore them when they are playing and I can’t tick them apart and leave them in the trash bin the way so many artists can be easily deconstructed.  I look forward to building our new house with some Deerhoof action going on.

I fell back in love with Sonic Youth with the Eternal and hope that we have finally made up and can go on being intimate.  I know I like this album because everytime I hear Sonic Youth I am reminded of my classic blunder upon meeting Kim Gordon during the Dirty tour.  She stared at me all icy and detached as I asked if Lee Renaldo hadn’t lived in Seattle some years ago.  “No.”  she replied.  For some reason I followed this up with a rephrasing of the question which only served to bury her interest in me even further.  UGH.  Personally I like to slough the blame for Kim Gordon’s opinion of me as a Seattle-centric grungish dweeb upon Rocket magazine;  to this day I can vividly recall reading this little factiod in the pulpy pages and had hoped to score an in-road to conversation with my stalker creepy inner knowledge of Sonic Youth’s members.

Anyway.

You know the Sonic Youth album has to be good for me to overcome visceral shame to push play.  The Eternal retouches on all things cool about Sonic Youth.  Reference the Deerhoof  comments to this album as well since the band has returned to the atonality and interesting structures that used to cajole me to listen to their fuzz and disonance in spite of the fact that I generally despise fuzz and disonance.  Every review says best disc since Daydream Nation and I wholeheartedly agree… For me it is like Goo without the cool album cover and “Cool Thing”.

I didn’t know that Death Cab had an EP on the docket but I stumbled upon a stereogum link to the video for the single.  It is fun.  It has the same slick sound that Plans featured, which is not a bad thing in my book.  Narrow Stairs was turned into Plans Part Two by all the reviewers, but to me it was a much different product.  This EP sounds like Narrow Stairs never happened… which is neither a good nor bad thing to me, but it is strange that the band I most closely identify with dcfc has almost the same narrative in reverse: ( how is that for a segue?)

The Hazards of Love came out before summer, but I just picked it up.  The Decemberists threw this whopper out on the table after a string of fun singles that were solid and lovely and built upon the momentum of songwriterly goodness that was Crane Wife.  (That was the wind-up, the part where I draw my fist back and then sock them in the eye.) POW!  I have the toughest time listening to Hazards.  I almost HATE IT because I care so much about them.  It is great that the band is stretching out, but I am not happy listening to it.  The prog in their prog-rock needs to be prodded.  The folk in their folkiness needs a fork stuck in it.  I include it here simply because I love them so dearly and I have pried my ears open even as they have sought to close themselves tight to escape the uncomfortable disappointment of hearing the album I was most eager to hear.  Kim Gordon isn’t even in this band and I feel like I have to overcome something to play it.

The disc that has taken hold of the “album of the summer” reins and has repeatedly beaten me with said reins like a sad pony is Day & Night by The Killers.  It is embarrassing and I don’t fully know why.  Like Keane, the band seems to build their albums specifically so that I will like them and that feels confectionery.  I guess I prefer a more medicinal quality to my music:  “take two tracks a day and it will broaden your horizons… and call me if you start having those Kim Gordon chest pains again.”

But the album is pretty well stacked with identifiable hooks and familiarities to the aural landscape of my formative years.  In short, if Modern English’s “Melt With You” brings back fond memories of something other than Burger King, then this album will be a fountain of youth.  I feel pangs of cool and uncool simultaneously when driving solo with the windows down and sun pouring into my daddy wagon as Brandon croons “Are you human, or are you dancer?”.

I am with you Mr Flowers, and I think I am defiantly dancer.


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