Summer Camp – Summer Camp

Summer Camp, comprised of real-life couple Elizabeth Sankey and Jeremy Warmsley, are a band you can be forgiven for not knowing. Despite first releasing music in 2009 it wasn’t until almost a year later, with the impending release of their 2011 debut Welcome to Condale, that the band actually revealed who they were. Up until this point Summer Camp had been an almost un-googlable band, represented by one EP, 2009’s Young, and a scratchy old photo of an awkward 80s teen couple. Condale perfectly reflected the anonymity Summer Camp were trying to cultivate. A concept album, based in the fictional American town of Condale, the duo’s debut told tales of teenage angst and romantic obsessions that wouldn’t look out of place if it was plonked down in the middle of Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

If their first album represented teenage years lived out in the 80s small town Americana of the Breakfast Club, then their latest release, the self-titled Summer Camp, is set squarely in a 90s LA rave; grown up, exciting and just a little bit dangerous. Gone are the nostalgic keys and timidly plucked guitars. Instead we are met with, at times, a wall of sound - throbbing beats and eerie synths. In the blink of an eye, 90s indie becomes Kraftwerk electronica before 80s pop fades in. It’s both gloriously fun and intensely confusing.

In all their previous releases Sankey’s voice had been the star of the show; an absolute powerhouse that could easily drown out any musical accompaniment that challenges it. But on Summer Camp the scales are far more balanced and it’s, well, band-like. Nowhere is this more obvious than on ironically-titled opener, The End, which may begin this album but most certainly marks the closing of Condale, with its brash opening synths and earnest refrain that “there is no control”. Unlike the music that accompanies them, the themes of Sankey’s lyrics are very much in keeping with those that appear on Condale, except that now she seems finally ready to step out from behind the story Summer Camp previously invented to hide from the world. Rather than singing about the fears and anxieties of every small-town teenager ever, Summer Camp tells of the loves, losses and out-and-out craziness that Sankey sees in herself.

In interviews the pair state that this album is about their marriage, but with lyrics like “all they say is everything has changed/ you’d better be okay with it, it’s not going away”, I sincerely hope this isn’t entirely true. Maybe Summer Camp haven’t divorced themselves completely from the fictional world of Condale quite yet, but however autobiographical this album really is, Summer Camp have, in their second attempt, created an album that’s funky, poppy, and just a little bit dance-y. This is one I still haven’t tired of listening to - even after at least a dozen spins.