The summer of 2020 was a transformative experience. I think we can all attest to that. Recently I have been coming back to the same album over and over again to remember and reflect on those experiences, of the late nights playing video games with my friends, of the feeling of sunlight hitting my skin, of a secret hiding spot full of off-brand pop from Kroger. I find it extremely hard to put down exactly how I feel about this. It’s something I can’t really articulate, or really explain. It was a weird blip in the history of the world. A momentary pause where everything just stopped. It was summer, Covid controlled everything, and I spent most days outside biking around or inside playing video games. Like I said it was a weird time. 

We called ourselves The Droogs. It was a dumb nickname from A Clockwork Orange that just kinda stuck. We would take our bikes out and ride around all day, buying Monsters at CVS and breaking into the Dakota stadium just to have something to do. We would ride around all day until we had to go home or something else. At night, we would get on discord and play Call of Duty: World at War while listening to RAMONA by Kill Bill: The Rapper. Staying up until 2 am every night just because we had nothing else to do. 

I’m afraid I can’t tell you much about the album, at least from a production standpoint. I really am sorry about that. But the album itself has such a specific vibe that I don’t think I could ever do it justice. The album is a mix of nostalgia and quiet comfortability. It’s messy, moody, relaxed, heartbroken, and peaceful all at once. The track “Black Coffee” was the first I heard, but tracks like “Good Luck Chuck”, “About Last Night”, “Summertime (The Overflow)” are some of the best songs I’ve ever heard, maybe that’s just because of these rose-tinted glasses I wear but still. This album changed me, changed my friends. It was a reflection of a summer that felt like a rebirth. Covid had freed us from the responsibilities of our lives and we were able to bond and love each other. 

The album, and larger the summer, for me at least live in a bubble in time, right between the old and new me. By the time the leaves began to wither away and fall, and the summer finally came to an end, I felt the return of some twisted normalcy. I had gotten into a relationship, and school was back albeit online. I wasn’t the same person I was at the beginning through. I had found happiness in the midst of a world screaming in pain, but I wasn’t the world. I was able to bike around, play video games, spend time stashing pop cans in stupid hiding spots and hang out with friends. 

I feel like there’s something I’m missing here. Something important, something I can’t define. Maybe there was an innocence that I lost somewhere in the past 2 years since then. Maybe that’s just part of growing up.