A quick explanation:
The idea here is to make a compilation album charting the course of a particular month—September, in this case. Part of the idea is having a good arc to it—this is why it’s an album and not a playlist; there’s a Side A and a Side B—and part of it is trying to capture the different emotions of a month in music. The biggest part, though, is that songs are a good jumping off place for writing about things that aren’t songs, at least for me. Consider this the on-site creative writing gym for The Barking Crow.
This month’s tracklist is as follows, and if you use Spotify, you can listen to it in playlist form here.
Side A
1. “Shotgun” – George Ezra
2. “Goodmorning” – Bleachers
3. “Fluorescent Adolescent” – Arctic Monkeys
4. “Sweet Pea” – Amos Lee
5. “Rain King” – Counting Crows
6. “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” – Bruce Springsteen
Side B
7. “All the Debts I Owe” – Caamp
8. “Lovers in Japan – Osaka Sun Mix” – Coldplay
9. “I Got You, Honey” – Ocie Elliott
10. “Tyson vs. Douglas” – The Killers
11. “Mt. Joy” – Mt. Joy
12. “Parachute” – Guster
Now. Track 8:
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The Viva La Vida/Prospekt’s March combination from Coldplay is a favorite of mine, and if we’re still doing this in a few months, we’ll likely get more from those two albums. So, uh, just a heads up on that.
There isn’t much to say about this song beyond its place behind Track 7 here. It’s a big love-as-an-adventure song, and a bit of the lovers-on-the-run song, as Track 7 was. There’s the imprisonment narrative, the love-as-an-escape/love-as-a-release piece, but however you take it, it’s about an immersion in love, and a togetherness in that. It’s about jumping in, or having already jumped in, and now being in the thick of it. Being there with someone.
The song ends on a question of sorts. A question of what’s to come. An openness, a faith, a hope, and a question in all of that. We’ve talked before about this element of September—how unlike many months, there’s a feeling of time being left. It’s an entry month. The weather starts to change. The rhythms of life find their rhythm. It doesn’t have to be love, but as September turns, it lends itself to immersion in something. Immersion in wherever you are, I suppose.
