Hot Town

Back from a blessed week of doing next to nothing up on the Bruce Peninsula (see above), and man the city is as hot as it was when I left. Last night I was turning my pillow over in bed every hour or so, looking for that cool(ish) underside, until the whole thing got irredeemably wet & wrinkled. My hair was an overheated ecosystem; I’d marvel sleepily every time I caught a noseful of my own simmer. This afternoon I practically sighed with pleasure as I entered every force field of artificially chilled air I encountered on my errands.

In short, the back of my neck is indeed getting dirty & gritty. But it’s good to be back all the same.

• New Radiant Storm King, “Froglegs (I Suppose)”
• Isaac Hayes, “Summer in the City”

The Hayes version of “Summer in the City” is from the rather fine album Branded, released about 10 years ago along with an all-instrumental disc, Raw and Refined. “Epic” is generally a suspect, superlative kind of word, but I’d say this track earns it at the very outset, as it gallops at you out of the humid horizon haze. (The MO here – a marathon run at a pop hit – recalls Hayes’s much-earlier cover of “Walk On By,” undoubtedly deliberately.) Buy Branded here.

The New Radiant Storm King album in question is August Revital, from 1994; this lazy, uneasy, sun-stunned song, with its indie-rock guitar shimmer, has always been pleasurably singed into my brain and in fact the whole album holds up pretty well. Not sure where or if you can buy it these days, but the band’s site is here.