Step Into Liquid

Pacific Standard Time by Poolside

If you lived in Los Angeles where all of the KCRW DJ's have this on their list of fav's for August, you wouldn't need me to put you wise to Pacific Standard Time.  Poolside is an unlikely pairing of a Dane and San Franciscan dedicated to daytime disco, rhythmic stuff that chugs along with a heavy bottom and an airy top. (Face it, we've all known someone like that, haven't we?)  

Pacific Standard Time is Poolside's debut album, after singles and mixtapes. Consistent from end to end, download all sixteen tracks fearlessly.   Hell, be old school and buy the damn CD for the car or that paint-spattered boom box you keep on the work bench in the garage.  You'll wear it out by Labor Day. 

But take note:  buried in the middle of this disk is a killer remake of Neil Young's Harvest Moon.  I double-dog-dare you to resist it.  

Beach Book

"The Dawn Patrol" by Don Winslow

I'm so not a detective fiction buff.  I get the whole thing, the complicated plotting, the eccentric protagonist with the smart mouth and the platform it provides for social commentary (usually poking fun at liberals).  I make exceptions. I'm a complete sucker for the hardboiled banter of Raymond Chandler;  "The Long Goodbye" with Eliot Gould, made from his best novel, is one of my all time favorite movies. But it's not what I grab for a plane ride or a week at the beach.  Until now.  

In a recent pre-flight visit to B&N, I was ready to grab "Savages," the Don Winslow novel that was adapted for Oliver Stone's rough new film.  Instead, I picked up, "The Dawn Patrol," Winslow's 2008 surf noir  and read it in a single sitting.  Boone Daniels (I know) is the surfing PI enlisted to investigate an insurance scam that takes a darker turn, with a Chinatown-like back story about the development of the coast south of San Diego.  Like crack on the page.  


Take a break from the Booker Prize winners and suck this up with Sublime and Guster playing on your iPod.  

Coming Attractions - New Music from the XX

The XX's debut made my "best of" list in 2010 and has remained in heavy rotation on all my, how you say, devices.  (If you haven't listened to it, for God's sake stop right here and go find it now.) Since its release there have been echoes of their airy, but tuneful sound in tracks released by Jamie Smith (aka Jamie XX) or produced by him, most especially his remix of Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here (a 2011 "best of" JFJ pick).

But new music is coming.  See if Angels, from their forthcoming disk Coexist, will tide you over or make you an anxious convert.  This is beautiful music, quiet but deeply felt, soothing even though it's suffused with sadness.

Can't wait for more?  See what Jamie did to (for) Adele:

Or how the band transforms (which is to say renders nearly unrecognizable) a soul number like Womack and Womack's Teardrops:

Just for a sanity check, here's the original in all it's mid 80's glory:

See if the music of the XX isn't the perfect antidote to the heat.