Music for a heatwave

Finland is being baked. The may have had chilly nights down in South Africa during the World Cup, but up here by the Polar Circle we're practically melting. This is the first time I remember our weather authorities are issuing health warnings because of the heat.

During the soccer finals weekend I put aside my usual prog & metal & classic records and settled on an old-fashioned vocal jazz and lounge diet: the only genre that really fits the weather. The fantastic Holly Cole's Shade is practically a theme album filled with summer songs spiced up with a Latino pulse here, a drowsy lizard-in-the-sun languidity there. And Jamie Cullum's Pointless Nostalgic, with its more traditional club/crooner stylings, helped me to imagine I was in some old-time class joint in Vegas, surrounded by all that... well, Vegas-ness, you know.

Sometimes music doesn't have to offer anything mindblowing or excitingly new. In slow-moving heathaze days such as these, it's enough to have good music work as a high-class, feel-good mood soundtrack