I know we're running out of these good days.
It's right about now in the year when the mortality of these Indian summer-ish temperatures comes into question and we begin to remember how we shivered , or how we're supposed to shiver. We just bask in the dusk of these days, knowing that it's all closing in on us. We bring the grill brush in for the winter and realize more and more how everything's getting increasingly apple and cider-based. These days are running away like rabbits roused from a cornfield by the loud picking machinery. They feel like they're bleeding as they lose their heat and that alone proves to us that they're not bleeding, just going.
The Pine Barons, a rock and roll band from South Jersey, offers us this point of reference, this fading, the glum tapering of the season in songs that feel more alive than you're probably thinking right now. Listen and you'll hear the triumphant graveyard shifting of Creeper Lagoon or some mutant, less mahogany-covered version of the Beachwood Sparks. You'll hear in them musky warmth, the smell of a toasty, wood-smoked flannel, rainbowed autumn trees and a night cut wide open by a spitting orange bonfire.