Don't you think it's time you got around to choosing that all-important Summer Album? I mean, it's late July already. Summer is half over! Don't tell me you've resigned yourself to the old standby again. You know as well as I do that the Master of Puppets tape that fused itself to the inside of your boombox when you left it out in the sun while painting your parents' garage in '94 no longer captures your sweaty summertime bummer. Your frustrations are too complex now to climax with "Damage, Inc."

Lucky for me, I happened across the perfect musical accompaniment to my lazy, hazy, wallowing-in-doubt-and-anxiety, dirty south, palmetto-bug-battlin' summer mope-fest: And the Surrounding Mountains by the Radar Brothers. Its vaguely depressive lyrics and wide-angle spaciousness suits my ambivalence to these hotter months perfectly, with just the right amount of intro/extro-spection to keep me going until Autumn comes to cool the blood.

I've listened to this album for almost two weeks straight now, enough to know that it's not going to wear off before the heat does. And that's despite the utterly stupefying simplicity of its component parts. Most of these songs shuffle along at the same slow, swaggering tempo with little sonic variation: they're usually built around acoustic guitar and warm analog synths, with vocalist Jim Putnam's David Gilmour-meets-Kermit tenor floating above in a languid drawl of humid acquiescence. Yet the album never loses itself in its own mired apathy; it instead maps a comfortable niche where mercury rises to meet a setting sun and dread, drugs and death are the only necessary comforts. Indeed, the Radar Brothers are smart to stick with what works, and as the album proceeds, each song seems to cozily sink into the next like sweat into faded t-shirts.

Radar Brothers are usually lumped in with slowcore groups of the Low variety, and there's a reason for that. But it's a better point of reference for their earlier albums, as they've expanded their sound here to position themselves along the lysergic axis of Mercury Rev and the Flaming Lips. Admittedly, they're far less overtly weird than Wayne Coyne-- no psychedelic parables starring giant robots as grim death-- and rather than orchestral bombast and angelic ghost-choirs, they summon a distinctly mellow California vibe incorporating only the mundane guitar, piano and occasional synth.

And the Surrounding Mountains begins with the grand and spacious sound of soaring harmonies and crashing cymbals, like the dawn breaking on a vast mountain range, while Putnam intones a vaguely threatening line to clue us in that all is not well under the bright blue, cloudless sky. The album peaks with "Rock of the Lake," the band perfecting their hallmarks: the spacy keys, the slow, swaying rhythm, and lyrics both strangely comforting and sinister.

Elsewhere, the Bros. get Floydian with "Uncles," which recalls More-era fluidity, and "Mountains," which could pass for a condensed version of one of Roger Waters' epic side-spanners. Familial themes run through the record-- first there's "You and the Father," followed by "Sisters," "Uncles," and "Mothers" (and lest we forget, the band's name is Radar Brothers)-- but otherwise, there's no clear thread uniting these songs into a singular concept. It's better that way, though, so that these tracks can work in all kinds of situations: indoor, outdoor, alone, with friends, morning, night-- an essential component of any summer soundtrack.

So climb outta that hammock and put down that glass of Country Time. Get in your car. You needed to pick up some more fertilizer today anyway. Stop off at your local record shop, and pick up a copy of And the Surrounding Mountains. I promise, it'll be worth your while. And if I'm wrong, "Leper Messiah" will still be waiting for you back at the house.

-Jason Nickey, July 22nd, 2002