What is a summer album? An album you listened to mainly in summer or which you listened to first in summer? An album which transports a kind of summer feeling? But what does that mean? What is heat, what is sun, what is light in music? New Order is summer, Joy Division is winter? An album which was released or recorded in summer? An album with song lyrics about summer? Is Yo La Tengo's The Heart is Beating As One a summer album? Released in late April 1997, I purchased it mid May. When a good friend had killed himself and I had to move on. It was a hot summer in 1997. Catherine and I saw Yo La Tengo in Berlin at the Knaack Club in Prenzlauer Berg. Maybe the best concert I have ever been to in my life. A crowded place, the sweat pearls were rolling down my front, Ira was doing the Hendrix on guitar. Intense. He sweated himself but he didn't care.

Georgia: Shadows James: Stockhom Syndrome Ira: Autumn Sweater

One of the most amazing song triplets ever. There is a progression from winter depression towards summer lightness. All songs are sad but you can dance to the last. Which maybe is the best. Very hard to imagine if you have heard the first two. Which are as tender and fragile as a white petal of an apple tree in May. Autumn Sweater is the end of summer. The fruit. It didn't need the remix. What a sad and beautiful world. Without the sadness it wouldn't be so beautiful.