Dream On

I walked home tonight, and all I could smell on the way back was delicious barbecue smokiness, which tells me - ignoring the calender - that it is officially summer.

There are a few songs that say summer to me almost instantly - 'Love Shy', 'Summer Jam', 'Long Hot Summer'... all the obvious ones. But I've recently gone through a spate of unearthing equally sunny pop gems from my happily mainstream-oriented youth.

Leading the pack, is The Wannadies classic 'You And Me Song', which just managed to top 'Dancing In The Moonlight' when I was deciding what to post. I'm still quite surprised that a band with such a depressing name could have produced such a happy song, but I'm certainly not dissapointed. Declarations of ever-lasting love are very summer, as are epic, crashing, uptempo choruses - especially preceeded by quite mellow verses. The You And Me Song meets all those requirements, and rounds the whole thing off with a little electric drum pattern, which sounds like its been through a million compressers and bitcrushers. Awesome. In a formulaic, poppy kind of way.

'Don't Fight It' - from The Panics - is less generally positive, but when the horns and the drums drop at the same time it becomes almost heroic, and has just enough of that summer vibe. The ending is particularly nice, with the vocals becoming almost R&B'ish and very melodic. Overall the song is a fairly average indie-rock number, but there's just enough of a wait between the incredible bits to make them seem even better when they come - it's catchy, laid-back and well produced.

Tahiti 80 are about as French and as 90's as it's possible for any indie/pop band to be. Most of their songs sound like a condensed form of almost gay happiness, delivered by an emphasis on trebley guitar bits and simple, regular drum patterns, overlayed at times by slightly more distorted guitars and cheerful, staccato, piano chords. Once again, these guys aren't incredibly musically talented - the guitarist is no Erik Mongrain - but they have a style which is difficult to dislike. 'Dream On' sums it up.

From Monument To Masses are a different kettle of fish, and 'Defeaning' isn't quite a summer song, although the guitar is quite reverbed and jazzy at times.

In reality, though, it's not actually summer anyway, so I guess that's OK.

The track starts off almost like an Aeroplane song, with DJ Shadow on the drums (I've already made it sound too good, I think, but I'll push on), and becomes progressively more and more rocky towards the end. It ends up almost like grunge, actually, but up till that point the song's fairly chilled so don't be put off. The guitar at the beginning is pretty special, very Lemon Jelly sounding (as is the initial drop), and it's a pretty cool song overall - nice and experimental.

The Wannadies - You And Me Song Buy
The Panics - Don't Fight It Buy
Tahiti 80 - Dream On Buy
From Monument To Masses - Defeaning Buy