187. Song No. 2,814: “Driving Through a Dream,” Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness
Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness, 2014

Some music sounds like a moment frozen in time, some albums have a season, some songs will forever be intertwined with a person or a feeling or a place. Of the two bands that rock me back to the American West with a damn near palpable thump, Dawes sounds a little Las Vegas by association and a lot Laurel Canyon for a thousand aural reasons, and Andrew McMahon‘s post-Something Corporate solo projects are dripping with Southern California. Whether it’s the Wilderness or Jack’s Mannequin, something about his music feels like it’s meant for driving down the Pacific Coast Highway, romping through seaside shops and watching the West Coast scenery pass by with all the marveling novelty of an East Coast tight knot letting an unusual proximity to the Pacific work its magic.

Which is weird because all my time spent in California was because of a former job, but for the kind of work trips that are equal parts working hard and playing hard (the latter being among the few saving graces of a job I otherwise despised). And those kind of immersive, forever-taking work days petered out into the kind of cathartic adventures that only happen when you’re so jet-lagged that everything’s a little hazy and dreamy and every idea seems like a good one, even if they end in traffic-choked runs for fabled fast-food fare (I don’t care if it makes me a cliche I should be embarrassed about, but I remain convinced that In-N-Out is always worth it), dashes across the beach to dip a toe in an unfamiliar ocean, conversations about the moral implications of nascent AI during the most scenic drive ever, or passing a joint around circle of people you’ll never see in this combination again but are your ride-or-dies for the entirety of some balmy December evening that you all tacitly agree is a needful departure from everyone’s humdrum weeknight routine.

So much of my time in California was spent in vehicles: taxis, Lyfts, limo buses, friends’ cars, rental cars, airport vehicles: You name it, I’ve seen Californian scenery from it and stared out its windows, drinking in every cliff and cloud and improbable vista like all the NYC building-gawkers I probably should stop making fun of (especially as someone who loses herself in the passenger window even when, like, hubs and I are running weekend errands). And I think that might be why McMahon’s music invokes such a West Coast correlation for me, with his songs always sounding like wind-whipped hair, open windows, unstructured days and winding roads going somewhere where the destination’s even better than the wide-open journey.