Past the Long Night of Winter
Like a stressed out, half-drunken, under-stimulated waste of a wage-slave with a sexual dysfunction, summer is finally coming. And with this happy release from our heads, our apartments, and, for some of us, our jobs, comes an even greater release—a release from the long night of winter music. In the depths of winter, covered in snow, a song may come on (or a whole album even) that you feel could only be experienced in the hot, sunshiney summer; at any other time, listening to even one or two of these songs feels like cheating. Now we can throw off the mantle of guilt—burn it!—and use these songs from Chicago-based online hit-delivering machine rockproper.com to welcome back the summer and its bright rays of rock.
It may seem strange for a city that limps through 8 months of winter to produce these surprisingly summery songs. Jason Frederick’s vocals in “Perfect” (Love Story in Blood Red) have the sound of someone who has been drinking for hours at a sunny barbeque, and the shimmery sounds of the cymbals behind them waver like a mirage in a desert. Cruise down a hot, lonely road with “Something’s Watching” (Andy Wagner, Horse Year), peering through heat waves at what’s to come. “Locusts” by Go Home Robot uses a wiped clean guitar and precise, full-band breaks, recalling the trees and phone lines sliding past the open sunroof.
Summer is a time for change, for a change in your playlists, for a change in your hair, clothes, attitudes. You can wear that flappy red dress, or those loafers with no socks, if you dare. And you do dare, because it’s summer, and everyone is carefree. You can strut around to “Who will be saved?” (Casey Meehan, Violet) and let the sun burn stripes in your skin. The smashing assertions of “Rabblerouser” (Where the Moon Came From, Twin of Pangaea) are just right for a day so bright that singing can only be done right with sunglasses on. Brother Truck’s “Sex Wax” reminds us that summer is also a time for surfing, or trips to the lake, or, if you’re stuck in the city, throwing water balloons off the porch down at someone. The mood, like a hot and hectic day settling into a steamy night, has just a touch of uneasiness about it, just a hint of subcutaneous troublemaking.
Steve Eck, recording from the lethal humidity of New Orleans, has an edge up on all the rest of the rockproper bands (in respect to heat), as the summers in that steamy city are at least three months longer than anywhere else. When the nights race away from us as summer elongates the day, we often don’t realize that we’ve been at a party for hours and hours, that the bars might be closing soon, that, although an orange burn is still in the sky, it’s time to go home. Then a song like “Just let us rest” comes over the speakers and the spell is broken, and we know it’s late, and it’s been a long night.
Author Anika Balaconis makes up one third of the tremendous trio, Brother Truck.
