Review Summary: the walls keep closing in
It’s rare for an underground band to come charging out of the gate with a self-produced debut album that is so confident, materialized, and artistically bold, yet that is exactly what Detroit trio Summer Like the Season accomplishes on their debut album, Hum. The project calls to mind indie pop from the late 2000s when the genre was interested in pushing boundaries and tackling experimental textures, while overall maintaining a catchy, hook-based pop accessibility.
On Hum, Summer Like the Season is equal parts pop, orchestral, electronic (almost IDM at moments), and subtly brooding with dark tensions and textural undercurrents that combine expressions of sweetness and bliss with sourness and anxiety, calling to mind the rolling psychology of a developing and changing mood.
Comparisons could be made to the early material of St. Vincent, namely the album Actor, where she too was interested in building moments of anxious baroque beauty. Note the bridge buildup of string tension during “So You Won,” or the expansive string-heavy chamber pop on “Guard Down,” which sounds cavernous in depth and authoritative in vocal delivery.
Yet Summer Like the Season pushes these boundaries further, composing their songs with more confidence and bold sense of adventure than your average indie act in regards to stretching the pop song structure; here they also call to mind a more accessible version of Bjork in that the music remains fluid and ever-changing. Warped synths, string sections, and post-punk influenced stabbing guitar leads sit atop grooving polyrhythms- yes, the album positively grooves, and maintains a consistent danceability, despite its rhythmic and textural complexity.
Lead singer and drummer Summer Krinsky possesses a unique and characteristic voice that at turns sounds beautiful and menacing; she is playful and adaptive in her phrasing so as to keep up with the staggering music. On tracks such as “Root Mean Square,” she is interested in layering vocal loops as an atmospheric layer over a swamp of percussion not limited to both analog and electronic drums, shakers, and other miscellania.
“Steps” is delivered strongly and confidently with a dark groove and a feeling of paranoid tension as Krinsky sings “the walls are closing in,” leading to a false hook where the bass drops out completely and is replaced by a stabbing lead guitar over a crescendo of percussion, leading back into a grooving, start-stop bassline. Album highlight “Stranger” expands on the formula laid down on Steps, doubling down the intensity of the moodiness, post-punk guitar stabs, and infectious grooves. Stuttering verses in odd meter lead into a curveball of a dance-pop hook, lifting the song into a major key while keeping the groove advancing under a cacophony of buzzing synths.
The lyrics are simultaneously cryptic and colloquial; they’re not so much interested in specifics as they are conveying immediate thought processes behind brooding moods: Simple statements such as, “where did we go wrong?” and “I made excuses for you too many times” sit next to complex abstract observations such as “you’re wet with artifice splashing whoever’s closest.” Though largely vague enough for open interpretation, lyrical themes call to mind one’s maintaining composure in the breakdown of hostile personal relationships, or in the case of “Raptor,” objectification and unwanted advances.
“Raptor” in particular showcases a secret weapon employed at points throughout Hum: guitar and bass guitar are used sparingly, so when they do make their presence known, they lift the track to a new level of excitement. Note the climax of “Raptor” where a previously absent guitar bursts forth to shred a noisy anti-solo, delivering a cathartic payoff.
Importantly, though Hum plays so freely with rhythm, texture, and structure, the album isn’t so much progressive or experimental as it interested in stretching and warping the conventions of pop music without ever needlessly straying too far off the map; no experimental section overstays its welcome or seems without purpose, but instead aims to serve the song. Summer Like the Season thus avoid the pitfalls of some art pop in that they never lose themselves in self-indulgence or delay any payoffs for the listener. It’s harder than it sounds, and easy to digest.
