Here’s a musical genre that I didn’t know I needed in my life: daytime disco.
You can think of it as music for when your mind wants to dance but your body wants to sit back and relax. It’s first-day-of-a-vacation music. Afternoon-at-the-ballpark music.
Or, more relevant to this post, Poolside music.
Poolside – comprising Filip Nikolic and Jeffrey Paradise – basically coined the term “daytime disco” themselves in a Pitchfork interview over a decade ago, and they would probably be among the first to admit that their music isn’t made for much more than relaxing. Their 2012 LP Pacific Standard Time is a great one to drive to, although it doesn’t have the depth to keep your mind engaged for anything close to the 72 minutes that it spans.
But that’s part of the point; it’s not trying to engage your mind. It’s trying to allow your mind to go off on its own tangents, subconsciously buoyed by the happy mid-tempo jams the music supplies.
“Tulsa” is (as you may have noticed) not a mid-tempo jam, and sounds just about as far from disco as you could imagine. It’s the opening track from Pacific Standard Time, and a great way to open the record. It’s not the sound of you sitting by the pool, it’s the sound of you deciding to sit by the pool. Getting your drink, your towels, and your flip flops. Preparing to shift your mind into neutral, and being okay with wherever it wanders.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. Flip flops. That’s a funny name. It wouldn’t work if the vowels were reversed. “Flop-flips” doesn’t sound right. I think there’s a name for that; the way the ‘i’ word always comes first. Like in “chit chat” or “hip hop.”
2. That’s a nice breeze. It’s weird how when I hear that breeze what I’m really hearing is thousands of leaves gently brushing against each other. I’m not really hearing the wind, just the consequence of the wind.
3. Lost my train of thought. I was going to go do something. What was it?
Recommended listening activity:
A cold drink and a hot tub.