This is the time of the year when we start taking to our porches. We take our dinners in the backyard, under a dusky light and the earned calm, with the neighborhood oozing with the smoke of a collective grill's fire. We have our beer all the way until we finally recognize that the dark has set in. We allow our hearts to settle into a cooler rhythm, beating more leisurely. We try to relax a little.
Salt Lake City band Mideau, led by singer Libbie Linton and Spencer Harrison, refer us to these eerie pockets of bliss that hover over us when we choose to accept them. They could be the norm, but we tend to refuse them, as everything else gets in the way. This band's gentle and spectacular folks songs aren't made of breezy sentiments, but rather some of the tougher intellectual gristle that proves to be hard to get out of our teeth or pulled from our craws. Even so, while singing about holy water, holy wine and the tightrope act of survival and actual living, they make it all feel so intoxicating and something of a lullaby that sweeps through us like a purr.