Loudon Wainwright III - Summer’s Almost Over
It’s hard to see it go.
EvenEspecially if you haven’t done anything at all these past three months. For many the thought of a return to the monotony of higher education hangs round the neck like some Septembral millstone. A “routine” is forced back upon us; no more staying up til 2, sleeping in past noon. The hardest part is seeing off summertime friends as separate ways are gone. It’s the most lamentable part of the year - that’s what this song says to me. But at the same time its calm melodies and gentle piano and strum-strum acoustic sound and feel autumnal. And that makes me long for cool evenings and red-orange-yellow trees and root vegetable dinners and the earthy autumn smells. Just a little bit.
Summer Outro
The last songs of the last parties of the season. Or the soundtrack to the sun going down on the last balmy day. Curated and conceived by Capital New York.
GIL SCOTT-HERON and BRIAN JACKSON - “WINTER IN AMERICA”
Jay Smooth of illdoctrine.com and hip-hop radio host at WBAI 99.5 FM: “I have a tradition every year, when the temperature starts to drop, of setting aside some time to meditate with Gil Scott-Heron and Brian Jackson’s ‘Winter in America,’ a few times on repeat. It braces me for the melancholy that comes with the changing season, and captures my accompanying sense of dread, each year, at the state of the world. Looking around at our political/cultural/spiritual climate in 2010, I’m thinking I’d better start my ‘Winter in America’ ritual a little early.”
BLACK FLAG - “LOUIE LOUIE”
jrb.
From Matthew Gallaway - “My summer outro song (R.I.P. Alex Chilton!)”
Underworld, “Always Loved A Film”
Maybe it’s only because I first heard it as August nights were cooling, but this track strikes me as a wonderfully upbeat drive towards… what’s already past. “The rhythm of the summer that you had.” The beat and creamy synth glide could have come from when the Berlin Wall was a thing, the vocal sound is preserved unchanged from the Save the Robots and Tunnel years… it’s the sound of days too hot to know they’re ending. But we know.
Thanks, Sarah!
Jamie Granato of Group Tightener Records, which put out Best Coast’s 7” - “I had a list of seven strong, sentimental and nostalgia-packed songs, but I decided that I can get reflective and potentially bummed out whenever. The point is that it’s STILL summer so let’s have fun with our dual feelings of the days passed and the new beginnings of wool jackets and falling leaves. This jam could work on a sunset rooftop with your girlfriend or in a club at 4 a.m. with your party bros ideally. Although you would jam this at a rooftop party overlooking Manhattan at 6:15 a.m. (is that when the sun comes up these days?) with all of your favorite people dancing around you while in your head you are thinking ‘Holy shit, I’m getting kind of old better live it up while I can.’ See you next summer!”
Capital New York has a nice feature right now called “The Last Song of Summer,” defined as “the songs you want to hear during the last set of the last party of the season, or while you watch the sun go down on the final balmy day.” This is mine, “Outro With Bees,” by Neko Case.
The whole song is perfect, but there’ s a moment in here when it switches from stereo to mono and becomes every last, late-night drive home I ever took through Kansas in August; the smell of burnt earth and freshly-harvested field corn, and the sound of distant thunder.
Submit your song here, or simply tag your post ‘summer outro’.
But also: Washington is a city that belongs to all of us. It doesn’t have to be a pejorative term. You don’t have to shrug your shoulders in resignation when you think of the Capitol. It’s something worth fighting for, but we have to fight for it. This song is no simple denunciation of the Bush administration—it’s a call to arms.
There’s a great piece up on Capital right now on The Last Song of the Summer. I wrote about “Everybody Knows” (again), and there are also great bits from Maura on Yo La Tengo, Aaron on Kristofferson, Seth on Mingus, Gillian on the Afghan Whigs, PitchforkReviewsReviews on MJ (Dangerous, even!), and Jay Smooth on Gil Scott-Heron, to name but a few.
Great read, and had *I* been asked (just kidding, had I been asked I would have flaked on turning anything in), I would’ve gone with Husker Du’s “Books about UFOs.” Feels like the end of a summer crush - on some girl who checks out UFO books from the library and reads them while eating oranges, the kind you always dreamed about - that never came to fruition. Of course, for a bigger groan, I could’ve gone literal - and Jeff Ott - with Fifteen’s “End of the Summer.”
YO LA TENGO - “AUTUMN SWEATER”
Maura Johnston, a music and pop culture writer whose work has appeared at NPR, Idolator, The Awl, and the Village Voice, among other publications: “The song I probably want to hear when this wretchedly hot, unpleasant-in-every-way stretch of time called ‘summer 2010’ makes its exit is probably ‘Autumn Sweater’ by Yo La Tengo. Sure, one might say that said song is a good choice because the chance to wear shirts with sleeves and not faint from heat exhaustion after five minutes of being outside is a luxury that one does not appreciate until one roots through a closet and notices a neglected hoodie that looks really comfortable for the purposes of curling up and taking a nap (especially given the heat-induced insomnia this summer has caused me). But I also like the lazy, breezy feel of the track; its wooziness pairs quite well with those late-summer nights where the sky is streaked with purples and pinks, when the barbecue is just smouldering out and when your friends decide call it a night early because there are responsibilities to return to once the sun comes back up.”
