A Midwinter's Eve Dream: Summer Hymns and the Summer Wardrobe

A Midwinter’s Eve Dream

I took notes on these two albums back in January, but never got to writing the “dreaming of summer” review I imagined. But wait! the opportunity has not passed. While at Mirror Lake State Park, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, an April Winter Storm chased me out of my tent after camping Tuesday night, because the thick, wet snow was snapping large branches all around me. The Winter Storm Warning has passed, but I am driving home today on sloppy, slick roads. A Midwinter’s dream of summer music seems most appropriate today. . .


Summer Hymns’ “Start Swimming” is Dream Academy rock in an indie psychedelic rock sort of way where it isn’t hard to imagine laying in a field of tall grass waving in the wind and sun. Of course, then the bridge comes with Who horns sending you running through the field, down the hill, and out of frame. It’s a beautiful, musical shot.

With vocals that are reminiscent of Cass McCombs, Summer Hymns (Philip Brown and Chris Riser, plus many friends) create lo-fi folk on Backward Hymns where hints of Sufjan Stevens and Half-handed Cloud show up with a Stephen Foster, vaudevillian score (“Darkness Comes,” “Limousine”). Getting back to the true source, perhaps, “Pheromones Induced” is highly reminiscent of The Beatles (White album).


A Byrds psychedelic chime guitar kicks things off on “Ned Kelly,” the opening track of the Summer Wardrobe’s self-titled album. The track is drenched in country slide guitar and Jon Sanchez’s deeply resonate voice. As a good opening track should be, it is a precursor of the throwback sounds to come on the album’s intriguing, enchanting songs.

“Blind” is built on a 50’s Hawaiian slack key-like slide via Chris Isaak. “Sparkle and Fade” recalls the Turtles while also bringing some fuzz guitar, a tom tom march, and a high-tone picked electric guitar line on top in the way of the Stone Roses. Then there’s the muscly psychedelic rock of “Underground,” like a Camper van Beethoven lick.

The apocalyptic slide guitar dream sequence of “Redbook” opens with the line: “Jesus loves me when I’m praying/He don’t see when I fall/Looking always for my savior/I don’t see no one at all.” The song wanders through some nether chambers of the heart, mind, and soul, and that mimics the fear of the song’s lyric that perhaps our names are not written in the Book of Life.

Thanks to Summer Hymns, Misra Records, The Summer Wardrobe, and Rainbow Quartz International for the review CDs.