It’s always right in the middle of the summer months when the drag sets in. We come to a point, in our slicked-over slacks and through the haze of our incurable dehydration, when we wish that it was just over, and that we could magically transition into our flannels instead of looking for any way to shed more clothing. We go to bed sticky and wake up to find that the conditions outside aren’t going to cut us any breaks. Even when the thunderstorms inevitably rumble through in a hurried spat, we know it’s all just going to end up cooking into a sweltering batter. We’re tired, we’re bored and we’re all just wanting that autumnal change that will, hopefully, bring some form of relief. The pleasure of slipping into a pair of cut-off jean shorts and heading to the local swimming hole, or of putting on a sundress and strolling about the city, is wearing off, and we’re beginning instead to curse the weather, which no longer seems so friendly. This is no longer the warm spring sunshine. This is the bearish, late summer inferno.
New York City four-piece The Postelles are a band that makes us cheer for the sunshine again. They are more of what we enjoy being exposed to. We know that their music will not burn us, but bronze us. They are the open-air café on glorious evenings we never want to end. They are the cool excitement we feel when we see pretty girls beginning to bare their ankles, mid-thighs and shoulder blades when the days start to grow warmer and draw on longer.
The Postelles come from a long lineage of golden-era rock-and-roll lovers. They are four young men (Daniel Balk, David Dargahi, John Speyer and Billy Cadden) who believe in the magic of a hook to unlock the secret flavors that they pepper their songs with. It’s the kind of power pop that illicits a Pavlovian response in music lovers. It’s the kind of music that just whistles behind you, that follows you, and when you turn around to see who it is there’s no one there.
Balk sings with a feigned British accent that sounds like the sweet sting of the lemon wedge in your water glass, like the overwhelmingly-pleasant sensation of those whittled-down ice cubes bumping against your lip as you finish off a cocktail. He sings about friendship and love and all of the many possibilities that we tend to allow ourselves to be consumed by when the temperatures grows more accommodating. We put ourselves out there to be taken, and to woo as well. It is this easy breeze that blows through The Postelles’ old-school Motown vibe, and it feels like something that we can chill to here, now and forever.