Coffee Shop Songs

That lingering warmth that has been missing from the summer has finally arrived. We have four days of immersive music to look forward to and perhaps I'm receptive to music. Perhaps it's the onset of July's brilliance, perhaps it's the wash of brilliant sunlight on rain scoured streets. Perhaps it's the great coffee. A strained lyric penetrates my reading just like the coffee shop songs of old. Wait. What's that. What the hell is that.

Coffee shop songs can take some finding. I asked the lady behind the counter whose album was playing. It's the radio, she said.  It was a voice that I recognised, I thought. Rich and deep in a distinctive female way, I thought. Dianna Krall perhaps. I scrabbled a few lyrics, but that particular coffee shop had no wifi. My search took hours. I took a wrong turning early on. Clearly, that particular coffee shop needs a decent sound system as well as wi-fi. She was a he: Ray LaMontagne. Someone I'd heard but never paid attention to.