Songs that make me smile: The Summer - Josh Pyke

As the days in Paris get longer and longer, this song just gets more and more appropriate. Josh Pyke's lyrics are so unapologetically Australian. The imagery he manages to squeeze into a pretty standard verse/chorus song is quite superb. It is a complement to the "evocativeness" of the lyrics that I found the actual clip to be a bit of a disappointment. It was as if I didn't really need someone to provide me with images for the music. I had them all in my head already.

Listen for the perfect slide guitar on the very last note. It's like the very last of the sunlight slipping away on a summer evening as you play cricket in the street with your mates, using a taped up tennis ball and an otto bin for stumps. All songs should end this way.



The Summer - Josh Pyke

If I could bottle up the sea breeze I would take it over to your house
And pour it loose through your garden (Does everyone feel warm inside?)
So the hinges on your windows would rust and colour
Like the boats pulled up on the sand for the summer
And your sweet clean clothes would go stiff on the line
And there’d be sand in your pockets and nothing on your mind

But every year it gets a little bit harder
To get back to the feeling of when we were fifteen
And we could jump in the river upstream
And let the current carry us to the beginning where
The river met the sea again
And all our days were a sun-drenched haze
While the salt spray crusted on the window panes

We should be living like we lived that summer
I wanna live like we live in the summer

And I’ll remember that summer as the right one
The storms made the pavement steam like a kettle (so great!)
And our first goodbye always seemed like hours
In the car park in between my house and yours
And if the summer holds a song we might sing forever
Then the winter holds a bite we’d never felt before

But time is like the ocean
You can only hold a little in your hands
So swim before we’re broken
Before our bones become
Black coral on the sand