Summer Playlist 2012

I take any excuse possible to run errands on warm summer evenings after the kids are in bed. I love driving through town with the windows down, music blasting, and car seats empty.

I've been making summer playlists, or (as they were known in 1987) "mixed tapes," since high school. The first one was recorded on Memorex and came like a rite of passage along with a driver's license and diploma. Guns N Roses opened the collection with "Sweet Child o Mine" and side two peaked with Simply Red's "Lady in Red." 

I like to think that my musical tastes have matured a little in the years since high school, or at least broadened past Top 40.  (Now it is my children who obsess over Gotye and Katy Perry, and I who need an iPhone app to identify them.) But there are a few constants in nearly every playlist that I create. For reasons unexplainable, you'll almost always find Neil Young somewhere in the mix, as well as a hymn. And everything must be singable. Loudly, with the windows open.

Here is the "Summer 2012" playlist, and I think it's a dandy! Grab your keys and let's ride!

La Font – Fine Lines
Washed Out – New Theory
Kakkmaddafakka – Restless
Toad The Wet Sprocket – Walk On The Ocean
The Shins – We Will Become Silhouettes - Performed By The Shins
Grandaddy – Hewlett's Daughter
The Decemberists – June Hymn
Jack Johnson – Take It Easy
Marissa Nadler – Baby I Will Leave You In The Morning
M83 – Midnight City
Patty Griffin – All Creatures Of Our God And King
Eleanor Friedberger – My Mistakes
Neil Young – Harvest Moon
Beach House – Lover of Mine
Givers – Saw You First