Brooklyn band Summer Lawns' debut album, First We Waited... Then It Started (Stunning Models On Display/Isidore), is shimmeringly arranged, the natural product of a band that was conceived as a sort of rock chamber music quartet (as their bio puts it) and even features a cellist. Fortunately, despite a description that almost leads one to fear pretentious wankery, the layered structures of the tunes leads to a kind of swirling psychedelic sound reminiscent of bands such as Explosions in the Sky.
Indeed, there's a sameness to the structures of Summer Lawns' tunes on First We Waited... that oddly enough gives a lovely hypnotic feel to the album. Each tune features a long languid buildup, volume slowly swelling (and occasionally fading: the good ol' soft-loud-soft-loud dynamics formula), as the guitar and cello join in and build on Jeremy Linzee's semi-falsetto voice. Where First We Waited... falters is when Summer Lawns try to speed up the tempo: Linzee's voice works best inhabiting the spare spaces in the music, such as in the droning "dance dance dance to the radio" chorus of "Transmission" or the reassuring "try to get some rest" line of "Piano Song", the first single. At its best, then, the album lulls you, calling to mind the dreamy, stuporific state of lazing on the lawn in the heat of summer.
This post taken from Delta Sierra Arts.
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