A summer's tale: the best songs of 2015 30-21

Remember when we walked the streets past houses with wrought iron fences and dog statues, and we held hands until they got kind of clammy, and then we’d both accuse the other person of having sweaty hands, but it was neither one of us really. It was just summer. (And this is just how I felt every time I walked into a room without you).

 

Summer’s gone, like light draining from the sky, but I still remember all the things we did. Like at the beginning when we rolled down the windows and sang songs like this ballad.

One afternoon, we dragged a blanket into the garden and read each other poems, and I ran my hand through your hair, and you smiled at me, and then I looked up at all that blue sky, at the branches of the tree that gave us shade overhead.

Remember that time we sat on the bus, and this song came on, and we put an ear bud in each other’s ears because we wanted to share it and also because there is nothing quite so sweet as looking at two people sharing music.

  

One day we drove up into the hills and talked all afternoon about our parents and our childhoods. We talked about the people we thought we'd be and the people we'd once been. 

And sometimes even the summer can break your heart. Sometimes you make a date with the night, the wind cooling your skin, and you remember all the nights past, or enough of them to try and construct some meaning in your life, wondering why tonight you're alone, sitting at the edge of the reservoir, looking out over all that water and wanting it to mean something, anything. 

One morning we drove down to the water to watch the minnows wriggle and the striders slip across it like a pane of glass. You told me about a time when you were fourteen and you saw an angel. It was your cousin smiling down at you from heaven. And for a while, we were quiet and we thought about the thin veil between this life and the next, about the wooden prow of a boat  parting waters like a veil. 

 One afternoon we drove two states and sat in the car with the windows rolled up, and felt the sweat pouring off our bodies, just to remind ourselves mid-winter, that once there had been summer.




 And towards the end of summer when the cone flowers and black-eyed Susans were dried husks, we walked through parched streets, into thin films of light, stood outside of bars, passing time, passing cigarettes, waiting on time to pass. And then the light caught your eyes.



Because when you get down to it, we're all, basically human. And all that I mean is that sometimes we get drunk, or say things we don't mean, or the summer ends and someone moves back to France, or the summer ends and nothing changes, or the summer ends and we visit a bar at the end of a long dirt road and tell each other stories about all the places we've been, all the things we've done.

A definitive and completely objective list of the best songs of 2015

If you're like me, you're wondering why you haven't seen all those end of the years lists yet. It's already October, 2015 might as well be over. Hell, 2016 might as well be over. How come I haven't read 300 lists of the best blogs, songs, neck ties, and hair cuts of 2015? I don't know, and you don't either. Don't worry. I'm here to wrap you up in a blanket, so we can sit on the couch and listen to songs together. Without further ado...which is hard for me, I effing love ado.

Hummed Low by Odessa

If I sat next to you on the bus we could talk about aesthetics and politics and social inequity. Later, after an afternoon of drinks in a small pub on the edge of town we could wander into the hills and lie down in the grass and look up at the stars.




The John Wayne by Little Green Cars

It is easy to fall in love with you, but you already knew that. Just look at you as I see you. It's blinding.




RollerCoaster by The Bleachers

The atonality and brazilian dance rhythms really bring this ensemble piece together, and when the Harlem cat's choir kicks in....Oh wait. This song is just fun.



 Until the Night Turns  by Lord Huron--In the moonlight you and I could sing this song, drunk in a cab on a drive back to my place, which is at the edge of the world. Once there, we'll take off our skins and stand in the window, with our spirits pressed against the glass.



Seventeen by Sjowgreen--Wait...Is that a song slowly building to something? If it is, then I'm on board. This isn't going to be quiet, now is it? No. It's going to light the night on fire.





Take My Love by The Lone Bellow--We sat across from each other in the bar, making eyes over two glasses of rum. And then you got up and wandered out into the night, streetlights spilled everywhere and snowflakes dancing like ballerinas. I followed you down the street singing this song.



Turn Around by Mikal Cronin---This song doesn't build like some of the other one's on this list, it smashes in with sypmonic sounds right off the bat and then idles down from there. It sounds like it was off the Garden State sound track. Remember how quirky that movie was and how we used to love Zach Braff and how quirky Natalie Portman was? This was long before you moved out to Denver and got married and bought two dogs. I loved that summer.



Goodbye by Who is Fancy--This song should probably be higher, but it appeared for one week on the Billboard chart at 98, which disqualifies it from being cool. That's how hipsterdome works, right? That and beards, if I understand it correctly. I'm reteroactively moving this song up a few slots. Sorry Jake Hagood. This song is great. Let me know when you want to go karaoke it with me. We can shout the part about how you won't find no one else like me at each other after a couple of whiskey sours.




Don't Wait by Mapei--Oh wait, is someone snapping their fingers? I'm probably in then.



Take you Home by Scars on 45---Oh. Is someone lightly strumming some guitar like it's Josh Radin circa 2006? Let's do this. Even better if the second verse has a surprise entrant by a female singer who I didn't even know was there. Where'd she come from. I love her. Plus these people look like they kind of love each other.