SUMMER: BEST TIME OF YEAR TO GO FOLK YOURSELF

I enjoy making mixtapes. Who doesn't?  I like all kinds of mixtapes: mixtapes with subliminal messages, mixtapes as birthday presents, mixtapes for new friends, mixtapes that strongly urge you to consider settling this out of court, mixtapes with codes that will lead to hidden treasure, and mixtapes that are actually just Led Zeppelin III.  I also quite frequently associate certain albums and songs with seasons of the year, so I like making mixtapes with that in mind too.  A few years ago, while totally high on boredom and Lucky Charms cereal, I decided to undertake the ambitious project of making mixes for all four seasons of the year.  It was fun, and highlighted a very specific way that I listen to music, but I soon realized that it was not something I could continue to do. I simply don't have enough season-specific music to make a new, original mix every year.  So now, three years and a couple hundred albums later, I'm back at it — but this time, I'm only doing one a year, moving a season ahead every year.  In other words, "summer" in 2010, "fall" in 2011, "winter" the year after that, and so on. 

"What," you may ask, "makes certain music feel like summer?"  I suppose that's highly dependent on each individual person's taste, as well as their feelings toward summer, but I think most would agree that summer music is ideally fun and upbeat.  I would add that it's a bit edgier than spring, maybe even a little wistful, with a sense of urgency, yet not as melancholy as fall.  It should feel warm, yet not overly-superficial or sterile.  "Also," you may now point out, "You sound like a pretentious hipster douchebag.  Wistful? Urgency? You're such a dick."

You know what I have to say to that?

SUMMER: BEST TIME OF YEAR TO GO FOLK YOURSELF

1. Settler (by) Balmorhea

2. Come Talk To Me (by) Bon Iver

3. Write It All Down For You (by) Elliott Brood 

4. Sideswiper (by) Fang Island

5. Some Are White Light (by) Caspian

6. Catch Hell Blues (by) The White Stripes

7. Bron-Y Aur Stomp (by) Led Zeppelin

8. Liner (by) Justin Vernon

9. The Gnashing (by) Baroness

10. Aves (by) Gifts From Enola

11. Þau Hafa Sloppið Undan Þunga Myrkursins (by) Ólafur Arnalds

Many would likely make a summer playlist of super-dancey pop tunes, and while I wanted to go for a warmer, more simplistic feel, I didn't want to get far away from that frivolous summer energy.  This year I've been discovering a lot of folk music, a genre which I had always under-appreciated, and it turns out that a lot of it is pretty good for conveying the warmth and earnestness I associate with summer. Balmorhea opens the mix with a Westerny twist on chamber music, spinning together handclaps, happy gang-vocals and what basically amounts to a neo-classical hoedown into one of the best songs I've ever heard, and one that would put me in a good mood even if a doctor were simultaneously telling me that I'd just been diagnosed with leprosy.  Bon Iver then proves how godlike he is by turning a Peter Gabriel song into a stupidly catchy, slow-burning folk tune full of remorse and longing, and making it fun at the same time.  Elliott Brood kicks it up a notch with their self-styled "Death Country," and Fang Island then proceeds to shred some nasty riffs all over your face.  For an instrumental interlude, Caspian demonstrates how heavy and thick a song can go while still retaining atmosphere and beauty, slipping some pedal steel guitar all up in there, just in time before Jack White leads us to hot water with one of the nastiest, beastly riffs I've ever heard.  Seriously, the slide guitar in "Catch Hell Blues" should have its own theme park ride.  If Led Zeppelin's entry doesn't have your foot stomping, well, I'm sorry about your amputation, but I hear prosthetic limbs are getting better all the time.  Justin Vernon takes it down a notch for some introspection before Baroness bounces right back with a rollicking, unstoppable monster from their recent Blue Record, one of my favorite summer albums.  Gifts From Enola's entry is paced quite differently than most, and nearly twice as long as any other song on here, but hang in there: last year's From Fathoms is also a perfect summer album, and this closer tosses more killer riffs in your direction than everything else on the mix combined before cooling things off a bit.  Finally, with summer ending, Iceland's Ólafur Arnalds combines a sense of optimism, nostalgia and wistfulness in a stunningly emotional, neo-classical epilogue.