On the majestic, bombastic sounds of the summer album...

*I wrote most of this in a one-night creative/nostalgic burst that I had earlier this spring, back when the weather first started to warm up and summertime seemed imminent. I left it behind, thinking it was unfinished, but I read it over and liked it to much not to put it up.

It happens every spring: as inevitably as the blooming of the trees, as sure as that first 60 degree day, where myself and thousands of others jump the gun, throw on shorts and a t-shirt, and roll down the windows in the car, pretending like it's May or June instead of March or April. I am speaking, of course, of my tendency to anticipate summer through music. And it always happens on nights like this: nights where a warm breeze blows through the trees, nights where the ghost of winter finally lifts, disappears, and is replaced by evocative smells and rivers of nostalgia; it happens on nights where my neighbors shoot off fireworks and scream in celebration at two in the morning, on nights where the people on the porch across the street drink beer and shout through their intoxication, and on nights where those things, for whatever reason, don't bother me, where I realize (to quote The Dangerous Summer's "I Will Stay"), "oh my God, it's almost summer."

Summer music is my favorite kind of music: I don't know why that is, but it's most certainly true. Every year, most of my favorite albums seem to drop in the summer (last year, I believe eight of my top ten came into my life between leaving school in the spring and returning in the fall); so many of my favorite songs or records recall glorious moments of summers gone by. And every year in recent memory, it hasn't felt like spring or summer until I've given some solid play time to a few key records. The most obvious is Jack's Mannequin and Everything in Transit, with its whirlwind depiction of a California summer and its power-pop aesthetic. It's a record that has served as soundtrack for a lot of important moments in my life over the past few years, and which has even served as a welcoming committee of sorts for Earth's most flawless season. This record has an interesting connection to the summers that followed my two freshman years: first, when I was fifteen years old, I was a year late to the party (Transit released the summer before), but that turned out to be okay, because the season that it did end up soundtracking instead was remarkable. I still remember long evening runs on the golf course near my house, with the sun setting over the hills and the sounds of that album blasting through my headphones. Andrew McMahon has a lot to say about being young and completely alive on Everything in Transit, and that was a theme that I related to that summer and during every single one after it. The other freshman year, the college one, included probably the most definitive experience I ever had with the album (which, for a record that had been one of my all-time favorites for four years at that point, was saying something). It was two years ago this month, and I'd just wrapped up the last exam of my first year in college. The weather was glorious, with sun streaming down from the sky and the temperature rising. And when everything was packed and I'd checked out of the dorm, I got in my car, scrolled through my iPod, and picked this album out. What followed remains one of my most fondly recalled road trips: the weather, the music, the anticipation to be going home for the entire summer, it all made me feel immortal: it was a great start to what turned out to be the best summer of my life.
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But even though it might always be the definitive summer record for me, Everything in Transit is merely one of many that fit that qualification. Perhaps the first was either Counting Crows' Hard Candy or Sister Hazel's Chasing Daylight: I don't quite recall which I snagged first, but I know for certain that both came into my life in the summer of 2004, and both were instrumental in shaping my love for music: they're still among my all-time favorites. Hard Candy has probably the best summer bookend lyrics out there: "Up All Night" and the line "we could drive out to the dunes tonight, 'cause summer's almost here" still drives my anticipation for the season to a fever pitch when the temperature starts to warm up, and the part in "Miami" that goes "the bus is running, it's time to leave/this summer's gone, so are we" transformed the song into my definitive, bittersweet end-of-summer ceremonial for years on end. But after those two came along, there were plenty more to come, and I can still hear pieces of my past in each of them: childhood memories echoing through The Wallflowers' Bringing Down the Horse and Third Eye Blind's self-titled album; a perfect family vacation in the strains of Better Than Ezra's Before the Robots; the angsty remains of my first summer with a job and a car in Safetysuit's Life Left to Go; the duality of the summer that followed my graduation, the balance between victory and uncertainty, unbridled freedom and fear of what my life would bring, and of course, day and night, represented by Mat Kearney's City of Black and White and The Dangerous Summer's Reach for the Sun; the first love that I discovered to the final two tracks of Dashboard Confessional's Dusk and Summer; and, though it seems like it was only a couple of months ago, last summer, completely encompassed in the flow of The Dangerous Summer's War Paint.

All of those records have played a massive role in my life, and each is at least partially responsible for my infatuation with this so-called "summer music," but even after getting the "soundtracks" out of the way, there has still been so much more: the boozy bombast of The Hold Steady's Boys & Girls in America,  the soaring voice of Chad Perrone, on his solo records and on Drawn to Revolving Doors with his old band Averi, which still take me back to the beginning of summer 2010; a slew of classics from last year, from the lovelorn pop symphonies of Matt Nathanson and Mat Kearney, to the dusky jams of The Damnwells' No One Listens to the Band Anymore; from the immaculate midnight atmospherics of Bon Iver's last record, all the way to Butch Walker's The Spade, which played as soundtrack for my farewell from town at the end of last summer, and will do the opposite upon my return for this one. And of course, there's Springsteen: Born to Run, which hardly left my stereo for the entire spring of my senior year of high school, soundtracked my graduation, and remained in constant rotation all summer long, and The Wild, The Innocent, The E-Street Shuffle, which is about as perfect an inaugural summer record as any I know.

When I look back at the summers of my life, I do so through the eyes of the songs that latched themselves onto moments from each and immortalized them. When I hear these records, they take me back to hundreds of reflective late night drives, to every brilliant moment spent outside in the glorious weather, enjoying the company of the people I love, and cherishing every splendid moment. I don't know what this summer will bring: I know that it could very well be one of the last I spend in my hometown, this place where I grew up and where so many amazing moments of my life have played out. If it is the last one, if a big chapter of my life ends in four months time, I can only hope that it's one of the greatest as well. And whatever record that comes along to encapsulate that? It's going to be one that I treasure for the rest of my life.

"You still get my heart racing for you"

Safetysuit - These Times

Universal Republic Records, 2012

Four stars (out of five)

 Three and a half years ago, I think I finally started to grow up. The end of my junior year of high school brought a lot of changes: saying goodbye to some of my best friends in the world, facing failures that I'd never had much experience with before, summer jobs and, along with my first car, more responsibility than I'd ever had before. That car also brought me a lot of freedom, and that summer was an exciting, unpredictable time in my life. Indeed, I spent many nights out of the house, hanging out with friends, terrorizing the town, staying out until all hours of the night, and through all of that, music started to play an even bigger part in my life than it already had up to that point. So many records came alive on those late night drives back home throughout that summer, perhaps none more than Safetysuit's viscerally emotional debut, Life Left to Go.

Life Left to Go wasn't a perfect record: there are a few songs in the second half that I still skip roughly half the time, songs that I think veer a little too far into the realm of generic modern rock, but when the songs were good, they were great. The band had this ability to blend both pop sensibilities and U2-sized stadium rock and roll into a sound that was, while not wholly their own, instantly distinctive. There weren't a whole lot of opening tracks as good as "Someone Like You" last decade, but that was only the tip of the iceberg of what that album had to offer. There was the stunningly emotional build of "Anywhere But Here," the visceral force of "Something I Said," the hurricane of sound on "Annie," the shattering resignation of "Gone Away" or the chilling pleas of the title track, which closed the record in truly powerful fashion. Those songs were all massively important to me then, and they remain so now. They take me back in time, even as I form new connections with them, like only the best records can ever do. There are only a handful of albums that I've formed a personal connection of that level with, and for a short period of time, I think a part of me didn't want a follow-up; I just wasn't sure if the band could deliver another record like that on the second time around.

For awhile, it seemed like These Times would never see the light of day. The first single, the hook laden and lovelorn "Get Around This," dropped last April on the band's website, and the record was set for a tentative June release. It was soon pushed back to October, then to November, and then into the New Year. As disappointing as those delays were for fans, they merely allow These Times to be the first record on a fairly blank slate of music for the year, and despite my initial feeling that it was a step down from Life, repeat listens have uncovered more emotional nuances than I originally noticed, and I now think that it's something I will continue to revisit throughout the year. The torrential, anthemic opener "Believe" is a contender for album highlight, as frontman Doug Brown's voice rises through a familiar feeling verse to a soaring chorus. The song picks up right where the last record left off, recalling at once both Life Left to Go's opening (the stadium ready, guitar heavy sound) and it's closing (a few lyrical callbacks), and it feels both refreshing and reminiscent of their older material. After my mixed reaction with the band's choice of a second single for this record, "Believe" reminded me immediately that they were still the same band I fell in love with nearly four years ago.

That second single is called "Let Go," and it's also the band's biggest hit to date: a dance/electronic-influenced pop song, co-written and produced by OneRepublic's Ryan Tedder, and bearing every one of his fingerprints. It's not a bad song by any means: indeed, "Let Go" is the kind of song I would be glad to find on the radio waves (were I forced to listen to that medium, that is), but it's well below the band's usual standards. It takes a big step towards the kind of generic, repetitive pop music that I think the band avoided so well on their first record, and when I first heard it, I was afraid that These Times would fall into many of the same traps. Luckily, "Let Go" is an anomaly, and most of the tracks on this record would have fit pretty snugly on Life Left to Go. That's not to say that there's nothing new offered here, though: "Crash" is a harder-driving rock song than the band has tried in the past, while "Things to Say," the gorgeous penultimate track, employs a dusky, folk-country inspired sound that is completely new for them. Just like on Life Left to Go, though, many of this album's best moments are firmly grounded in the grandiose, from "Believe," to the politically-minded title track, to "Never Stop," perhaps the band's purest love song to date. 

Safetysuit save what might be the best for last in the form of "Life in the Pain," a beautifully subdued moment, full of ringing guitars and gentle acoustics, the band providing the perfect bed for Brown's fantastic vocals. Brown's voice has always been the secret weapon for this band: their lyrics are fairly simple and blunt, both on this record and it's predecessor, and they could easily come across as bland and cliche in lesser hands, but Brown delivers them with such thorough conviction that they still somehow manage to hit home. Maybe it's because the things they write about are so easy to relate to, but I always have just felt their songs, and this new album, especially its closer, is no different. Their last record found me at a crossroads of sorts in my life: like I already said, that was the summer where I really grew up, at least where I started to. These Times finds me at a similar crossroads, bidding farewell to things that have been a big part of my life for a long time and embracing new opportunities, but the music still resonates with me just like it did back then. Albums like this are a gift: they come into your life in a serendipitous instance and they remind you why you love music so much, remind you how some things never change, how a perfect song can still come along and take your breath away. Like its predecessor, These Times isn't a perfect record, but it is a sublimely moving one, and sometimes, that's even more important, and as long as this band continues to write records like that, I'll continue to listen.

"You're the song I wrote that I will always love"

The Dangerous Summer -War Paint
Hopeless Records, 2011
Five stars

Two years ago, when The Dangerous Summer landed on my radar with the release of Reach For the Sun, I was checking out the record based on one great review of it, without hearing a single track and lacking any knowledge of this band's background. The band turned out to be the best discovery I made that year (and I made many), and over the course of that spring and summer, that record got to me in ways that only a few albums ever had before and maybe only 2 or 3 have since. It found me in an interesting place in my life: I was about to graduate from high school, had just received my acceptance letter into my college's music program, after a solid month on the waiting list, and I didn't have more than a faint idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Reach For the Sun came into my life and became my soundtrack: all of my uncertainty, all of the bittersweet feelings I had about graduating, and then later about leaving behind the only town I'd ever known, seemed to be staring back at me just under the surface of The Dangerous Summer's emotional vocals, heartfelt lyrics and their wall of guitars. There were songs I felt I might have written myself, songs that flawlessly described the way I was feeling, or songs that spoke of experiences like ones I had faced over the past few years. I took those songs, filled them with my own experiences, and they became immortal to me. It would quickly lead that album into my top 25 of all time.

Two years later, they're back with a sophomore record that makes me feel almost the same way, an album that is every bit as good as it's predecessor (or even a little bit better) that has become the soundtrack to my summer and unquestionably my album of the year thus far. War Paint picks off where Reach left off. Make no mistake, this isn't a departure: most of these songs would have fit comfortably on the last album (a record which wasn't notable for it's sonic variation anyway). That's not to say that all the songs sound similar, but they could easily blend together on first listen or for someone not already used to the band's songwriting style. The key to the record is frontman A.J. Perdomo, with his earnest lyrics and fiercely emotional vocal delivery (what he lacks in technical skill, he makes up for in conviction). The guitar sound on this record is massive, and though the constant presence of the instrument may be tiring for some listeners, Perdomo's songwriting is simply too good to ignore.

I could go through this album, describing bits of each song and quoting lyrics, but those things couldn't possibly express the way I feel about this album. The Dangerous Summer, more than perhaps any other artists I know, more than Butch Walker, more than Bruce, more than Jimmy Eat World, appeal directly to my emotions. When I hear A.J. Perdomo sing songs like "No One's Gonna Need You More" or "Siren" I can't help but be drawn in. And when he sings the bridges of those songs, the part of a song that seems to be his songwriting specialty, I can't help but get a little bit choked up. This isn't a record I can go through and speak at length about every single musical nuance, because honestly, there aren't many. The instrumentation is basic: guitar, bass, drums and vocals, the chord progressions pretty standard. A detractor could easily find a lot to complain about on this record, and yet, when I hit play, I can't help but be completely captured by what is coming through my speakers. There hasn't been a record this year that has been able to involve me so thoroughly. Whenever I play a track, I can't resist listening to the rest of the album from that point. And I always sing along to every word.

For as far back as I've been in love with music, a band or an album has defined my summers: 2004 belonged to the Counting Crows and Hard Candy. 2005 was ruled by Butch Walker, as was 2006, though he was joined there by Dashboard Confessional with Dusk and Summer and Jack's Mannequin with Everything in Transit. 2007 was all about Black Lab and Moses Mayfield, 2008 encapsulated by Safetysuit's Life Left to Go, 2009 by Reach For the Sun and Mat Kearney's City of Black and White, and 2010 had a varied soundtrack dominated the most by Chad Perrone.

War Paint will be the album that will always take me back in time to summer 2011: that night in mid spring when I first heard an unmastered version of the dark "Work in Progress." Rushing home to download the record the night it leaked and hearing the opening bars of the title track cascade out of my speakers. And plenty of early Sunday evenings or late weeknights, driving home with the album playing at full volume, singing along with every song at the top of my lungs and marveling at the beauty of this town, at the gorgeous night skies or the breathtaking sight of the evening sun sparkling on the water. All the time I spent with my girlfriend and her family or with mine, all the nights performing at my local dinner theater and just loving my life and all the people in it, always wishing this season could last forever, will at least be forever preserved in these songs: in the retro guitar intro of "I Should Leave Right Now," in the shattering bridge of "Miscommunication," or in the massive chorus of "Everyone Left" and the emotional release that comes during the climactic moments of "In My Room."

"Waves" is the album's closer, and I can't really imagine a better finale to my own near-perfect summer than that. When I hear that song, the entire season, from the day I left school until today, flashes before my eyes. I see the sun-drenched beach where I spent so much of my time, and for a moment, I can almost feel what it was like to be there, but then the song is over far too soon, and it's gone. And then it strikes me just how quickly this summer flew past: it seems like it was only yesterday when I took a twilight walk around campus on the first (and one of the only) gorgeous days of last spring and felt like I could almost taste the summer, like it was finally within my grasp after what had been a truly awful semester. Now, here I am, with less than a week left in my hometown and wishing with all my heart that I could go back.

But as A.J. sings in War Paint's final song, "I'll take my time and move on from all of this, it's all about the rolling waves." No matter what happens, no matter where life takes me from here, I think I really am ready to face it, it's just always so hard to say goodbye to something that feels completely safe and friendly. It's times like these where albums like War Paint come to mean the most to me, and I can guarantee this is a record I'll be listening to for the rest of my life. The best album of the year, the best album I've heard so far this decade, and probably the first new album that will join my all time top ten since Butch Walker dropped Sycamore Meadows in 2008, War Paint is a masterpiece, and means more to me than I think I'll ever be able to express to anyone. It doesn't matter to me that it isn't going to show up on end-of-the-year lists for the likes of Pitchfork or Rolling Stone, and I don't care that the vast majority of the people I know will never have any idea who The Dangerous Summer are. I don't need anyone else to tell me this album is something special: my heart's already done that for me.