In August, summer seems to get bored with itself. The evening light is a little lazier, the heat lingers but doesn’t really cook. Faded are June’s optimism and July’s reckless abandon. Kids may even briefly look forward to school. There’s a few more chances to catch that summer feeling, though. A few more campfires, cookouts, and clambakes–occasions to break out your best print shirt before that first chilly day reminds you to pull your fall shirts and shetlands out of storage. -Pete
Summer songs are a bit of an, uh, obsession of mine. Over the years, one thing stays true: I may want to live in a perpetual state of mid-June but I want all my music to sound like late August: “tinged with fragility and marked by melancholy.” I realize that doesn’t exactly sound like a party but the end of summer isn’t about getting turnt. It’s where we take that extra moment to take in orange sherbet sunsets and enjoy nights without nary a jacket. I can’t quite explain how you take that and translate it into a song but our playlist suggests that many an artist has found their way to capture that sublimity. -Oliver
To help you savor those late summer evenings or last days at the beach, music writer, scholar, and DJ Oliver Wang and I put together a mix–we all love music at PTO and we’ve done this before, but never with the help of a professional like Oliver. We traded song suggestions, tinkered with the sequencing and edited it all down to 20 songs that capture the perfect laid-back summer vibe. I tested it out last weekend in several summer settings–notably in the car and out back on the deck–and let me tell you, it goes. -Pete
The Put This On, End of Summer Mix