Thank You (TRR50)

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It's around mid- to late June when people start to talk about the year's crop of perfect summer pop songs - what to play in the car when driving out of the city to the seashore, or to have cycling on the iPod when walking home from work. Although the Temporary Residence label released its 'Thank You' compilation - a collective thanks to the faithful devotees who have helped the label reach its 50th release and eight years of operation - in early May, it's a disc that should be savored at the beginning of September. This is music for when the evenings cool down, shadows grow long, and the public beaches go back to the locals.

Explosions in the Sky captures this essence of a season slowly dying with its contribution, 'The Long Spring'. The song has that hallmark Explosions' approach - building and layering melancholy guitar meanderings on top of slow, almost military-like, percussion, twisting the mix into knots with persistent doses of adrenaline, and then tearing the whole structure down again. It aurally paints the portrait of the last holdout, the vacationer who defiantly waits until the last moment to turn his back on the ocean and head home, not wanting to return to the real world of rent and responsibility.

Kammerflimmer Kollektief's 'Eiderdaunen (Version)' shares this same sense of transition, though with a more experimental bent. Guitars caw like distant seagulls, an insistent tinny chiming along with added electronic effects play out like sounds heard in a boardwalk's broken-down penny arcade - all backed up by the lonesome draw of a slide guitar and deliberate drum patter.

Bands like Rumah Sakit, with its ferocious math-rock outbursts, and Sybarite keep the mood from getting too sentimental, but the compilation does end on a flawless sunset with Sonna's 'The Closer' - a warm, sheltering guitar ambience like the last few rays on the horizon radiating against your back. Before you know it, both track and disc are shimmering and fading away like the summer season - postcard-perfect post-rock for the post-summer.