Eclectically Challenged

One look at the current top 40 and it is impossible to realise that we are in the middle of the summer holidays! However, there seems to be one thing missing this year, and that is the huge infectious summer song that you cannot escape! Nearly every year you get a song that encapsulates summer, followed in September the song of the clubbing season. Last year we had I’ve Got A Feeling by The Black Eyed Peas, the year before All Summer Long by Kid Rock, songs that in one listen make you think of summer. This year the closest we’ve come to that is We No Speak Americano or California Gurls, but neither quite have that spark that makes everyone want to abandon everything and baske in the sun (when it appears of course!). So perhaps this will be a year when we all have to go in search of our own summer defining song, instead of one that gets everybody in the holiday mood. My proposition; Let’s Go Surfing by The Drums.

The Brooklyn band claim to only write about two things; one of which is ‘the first day of summer…and being overcome with all of your hopes and dreams at once.’ Let’s Go Surfing is very much in that vein of thinking. Effortlessly summery, the song and it’s theme have flashes of the Beach Boys about it; that ability to invoke images of sun, beaches and clear blue seas, even in the worst of British weather. This is not an easy feat, and one that I don’t think has been managed with such skilfulness since All Summer Long, and even then Kid Rock had to use a sample to capture that sound. The Drums have managed to bring us a song that epitomizes not only the sound of summer for those who get the chance to enjoy it, but also the feeling of those stuck working while the sun is beating down; ‘Oh Mama, I want to go surfing’, is essentially saying all I want to do during this gorgeous sun is go to the beach; and as someone who works throughout the summer this is often what ends up being the main thought of the season! So for a song to reflect both of these ideas, is somewhat of a challenge, and one that has been met by Let’s Go Surfing. So, with an apparent lack of a song to define summer 2010, whether you are on holiday, planning to go away, or simply stuck at work day-dreaming out the window, The Drums can help make the sun shine a little bit brighter.