Saturday makes my summer

Brad Lindert

Don’t you love when a band makes an intentional summer album? I mean, bands like The Apples in Stereo only make summer albums, really. Summer albums just make the flowers grow along your path as you walk the streets. I love summer albums; they can make or break your summer. I mean, everyone needs a theme to their summer; why not make that theme musical, right?Well, Saturday Looks Good To Me have made my summer album for this year. Why, what is the album title, you ask? It’s called “All Your Summer Songs.” This album screams summer music fun, from the soft yellows and oranges on the cover to the people looking at 45s throughout the album art. You know that this is an album about the summer and music.

Their sound… how can I describe their sound? Well, take an indie musical genius (Fred Thomas of Flashpapr fame) and have him make a Beach Boys-inspired album. This, of course, is not a new idea; I mean, look at The Apples in Stereo. They copy the Beach Boys to the point of being a blatant rip off.

So why is Saturday Looks Good To Me a good band? Well, they know how to skate the line between classic chamber pop and modern indie rock. Fred’s voice is a voice of an angel: an angel that can’t sing. His voice might not hit correct notes, but he still sings the notes he can hit in a beautiful tone.

A perfect example of this is “The Sun Doesn’t Want to Shine,” a sad song about being alone after a bad breakup. The music flows with a great lead violin, and the tension is added by Thomas singing, “No amount of angry words could disturb how happy we used to be.” This song makes this album. There is no song on this album that can hold a flickering candle to this song. Well, maybe the title track could, with its somber chorus, “Are we breaking up/ should we break up?”

If you haven’t noticed, this is not always a happy summer album. Really, after the first listen I realized that this is the perfect Indian summer album, when it is 70 or 80 degrees and the leaves are starting to turn. The water in the lake is warm, and you are tired from a summer of sunburn and swimming. Now all you want to do is sit on a lawn chair in the shade of some pine trees and watch the sun set over the lake. And this, my friends, is the album to do that to.