Don’t let the try hard look at me album art fool you. Their music matches their image perfectly.
Like a bundle of jazz guitar lounge lizards set out for one final ride in undertipped and underpaid Hell, Summer Houses deliver a cohesive, dissonant reap of sludge guitar and rattling post-punk build up.
Take a listen to album opener “TELEVISION” now. Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
The vocals on the project are wails, yeah, but they are sufferable and fitting to the musical landscape they inhabit. Summer Houses sound like a band started by close friends for fun that turned into something serious after a few rounds of beer. And that makes sense since they kind of are.
“As best friends, we forged Frantic Hearts through years of daily challenges, working class grind and traumatic events to create a vivid, high contrast sonic experience crafted as a jagged, rock’ n’ rollin’ rollercoaster.”
They succeeded their own expectations in a sense considering how different this album is from anything I have heard so far this year. There is a lot of emotion on display here, but much like the constant riffing, it has less of a lyrical focus and becomes more of a mood piece. Through sheer sonic vision and friendly good times, Summer Houses have created a record that fans should eat up like American Spirits do middle school milk money. Their honesty and relationship to each other shine through this entire project… seemingly with ease.
To call them a Zappa-loving crew would be too trite and unoriginal, but at the same time their ability to mix sounds, emotions, and go from irritable to insatiable certainly meet the late Frank’s protocol for a good time. But these guys don’t have a twenty minute “Inca Roads” solo in their used-Hot Topic jeans. They have their creative building blocks at the forefront for fans to watch them topple and grow together. Exciting stuff in my opinion.
This record is one of the more interesting albums I have heard all of 2023 and this Portland-base group certainly deserves your attention. Frantic Hearts is proof that friends can work together through their pain and come out swinging with a nine minute ethereal jam (Wartime).
Let’s hope they keep up the sad work and expand on desolation next album release.
