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Product details
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Track Listings
| 1. Better Off Without You |
| 2. Brian Krakow |
| 3. I Want You |
| 4. Losing My Mind |
| 5. Summer Camp |
| 6. Nobody Knows You |
| 7. Down |
| 8. Welcome to Condale |
| 9. Done Forever |
| 10. Last American Virgin |
| 11. Ghost Train |
| 12. 1988 |
Product Description
Review
It’s conjuring similarly precise portraits of this fertile, fervid period that makes London duo Summer Camp’s debut album, Welcome to Condale, such a success. When the pair first came to the fore two years ago, hiding behind old sepia pictures and pretending they were six Swedish teenagers, bloggers aligned them with the chillwave movement. Listening back to early demos, they’re characterised by a sultry, languid drift, songs imploring a paramour never to leave some halcyon moment.
However, the band – eventually unmasked as Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey – fast moved away from ideas of spinning out endless summers into developing their own world of twisted youth, transferring the Swedes idea into the cast that populates these songs. Condale, an accompanying fanzine explains, is an LA town where kids run wild in the mansions of dead movie stars, full of torrid love letters and ambitious, worthy mission statements from the town’s local band (so, not dissimilar to John Hughes’ Shermer). It’s inessential to enjoying the album, but demonstrates their commitment to creating a world that rings true thanks to precision rather than cloudy vagaries.
Most importantly of all, there’s no doubting the intent that blazes through the individual songs on the record. The pair acts out power struggles between characters, dominating and demeaning, breaking up and getting back together with the cavalier flamboyance that fades in adult relationships. On opener Better Off Without You – think a bra-burning Shangri-Las – Elizabeth rails pityingly about the drag of a boy who can’t stop calling, tartly stating "there is no me and you". The following song, Brian Krakow (named after a character from My So Called Life – a little odd in their otherwise original story), sees Jeremy’s character laying down the aloof but alluring conditions on which he’s willing to submit to a girl. The power struggles come to a hilt on highlight Losing My Mind, a series of despondencies and ultimatums spelled out through clever line exchanges: "You you you’re wasting my time / Time time I was moving on / On on on honest to god…"
With Pulp’s Steve Mackey on production, …Condale has a stern bite, all bristling synths and ramped up, classic guitar licks. For some, the idea of the album as a character construction may seem insincere, but its cinematic quality and their ability to conjure the sheer ignominy of youth, as on the gum-snapping, eye-rolling Last American Virgin and dark Nobody Knows You, works marvellously. Like Bashkirtseff and Pomeroy before them, Summer Camp’s debut marks a sincere, wryly appealing turning point in the art of romanticised retrospection. --Laura Snapes
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Customer Reviews
Some might argue that Summer Camp are essentially a bunch of Retromaniacs who have spent too far much time listening to Blondie and Yazoo and on times come far to close to crossing the line marked "twee". Yet Sankey is a canny character and knows the source material for this era very well being an ex NME journalist who appears to have got a burning desire to "pick up the tools". On balance we should be thankful she did for this is a genuinely well constructed and pleasurable album with enough cool quality to separate it from the mere run of the mill. Who knows whether this band has any chance of longevity but you suspect that before they run their course a couple of big single hits could be entirely possible plus a short period of world domination. Quite how two Londoners have managed so accurately to produce hymns which capture so accurately USA centred Teen Dreams is a mystery but in the last analysis the heat and the warmth on this album is irresistible.
Really love this album. Full of proper songs with an authentic sound. I don't normally like female vocals but here they really work. A joy to listen to, and far more satisfying than all the background pap that seems to permeate the 'industry' at the moment. It goes against the grain, i know, being playful, enjoyable, well written, and, dare i say it, fun. If you're more into analysing music to the nth degree, rather than actually enjoying that simplist of human connections to music then you're better off avoiding this, you simply won't understand it.
If that doesn't rule you out then give it a listen - who knows, maybe this concept style, tongue in cheek, nod to the 80s album will fill the musical void for you too?
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