One of my favorite descriptions of summer, particularly its languid, melancholy months, comes from Don DeLillo\u2019s first novel, <\/span>Americana<\/span><\/i>: \u201cSummer unfolds slowly,\u201d DeLillo writes, \u201ca carpeted silence rolling out across expanding steel, and the days begin to rhyme, distance swelling with the bridges, heat bending the air, small breaks in the pavement, those days when nothing seems to live on the earth but butterflies, the tranquilized mantis, the spider scaling the length of the mudcaked broken rake inside the dark garage.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This of course is not the summer of your childhood, spent racing to the river, camping out on the trampoline, and picking salmon berries in the woods. It\u2019s a slower summer; the passage of time stifled by heat and concrete, and the knowledge that as an adult, the only distinguishing aspect of the season is its boiling sun and<\/span>\u2014<\/span>if you\u2019re lucky<\/span>\u2014<\/span>an abbreviated Friday at the office. During these months I tend to favor tunes that match the heat in grime and delirium, rather than turn up to the tempo of summer jamz (who really needs to cue those up anyway, when they\u2019re blaring from every idling car come August?). For me, summer is a season of slower music, mimicking the sluggish pace of trudging through the sweltering city, and dreaming of a place with more trees<\/span>\u2014<\/span>or at least cheaper booze. For all the like-minded, hot weather sloths, here are five records to get lost in this summer. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Van Morrison, <\/b>Astral Weeks<\/i><\/b>, 1968<\/b><\/p>\n

For me this record is synonymous with waking early up in a sun-filled room and shaping a slow and quiet day; making a pot of coffee, scrambling some eggs, and lazing about. Van Morrison\u2019s 1968 freeform masterpiece blooms with verdant imagery so beautiful it is agonizing, and while I\u2019ve probably listened to it in full more than any other record, its transportative nature always manages to take me to a place I\u2019ve never been before. The meandering phrases of flute, saxophone, guitar, and bass make you feel like you\u2019ve wandered an unknown region of the world without so much as stirring from your couch. Perfect for the days when it\u2019s too hot to venture outside.<\/span><\/p>\n

Astral Weeks <\/span><\/i>feels as much a part of the sky as and stars as it does the earth. On its centerpiece \u201cCyprus Avenue,\u201d spare bass roots the song into the dirt, while plinks of harpsichord and fluttering woodwind lift it skyward. It is an aching portrayal of love so painful that its narrator endures multiple bouts of complete paralysis: \u201cAnd I\u2019m conquered in a car seat\/Not a thing that I can do,\u201d Morrison sings. \u201cCyprus Avenue\u201d is one of the most precise depictions of new love<\/span>\u2014<\/span>something that summer can rot just as easily as ripen. The title track, which opens the eight-song cycle, is a (slightly) less heartbreaking soundscape, arranging strings, celestial flute, and brushes of guitar into a solar system of sound, at the center of which is Morrison\u2019s voice, beaming like the sun.<\/span><\/p>\n