Located in Southern California, but originally from the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, singer/songwriter Joe Summers has spent the last 15 years honing his craft. Sometime in between he left it to pursue a career in the circus, but recently decided to get back to music and teach himself the ins and outs of home recording. Summers has a history of playing small ambient sets of melancholy solo music but this time around, he’s taken on the task of recording a first proper album with a full band. A Fracture in The Light was recorded, engineered and produce all by Summers and it’s a journey through a dreamy world of trauma and recovery. After losing his father to suicide about ten years ago, Summers set out to try and describe his journey of grief, loss and finding joy.
The music is set in a dreamy tone, to set an audio depiction of strange and ambiguous emotions that come with trauma, recovery and a violent restructuring of the world around. Lyrically, the songs range from straightforward to nonsensical and depict more emotion than description. Themes cover many areas – from darkness to peace and joy. Summers states that as he’s gotten older, the music “has become less desolate and more reflective, always asking a question but not always looking to finding answers.” To begin, “Standing in the Light” offers a dreamscape sound with elements of ambient and indie pop. The melodies are soft and wispy, and the bass line carries you through, weaving in and out of the synths, guitar and electronic beats. “Shift” has a light acoustic rhythm and some added flourishes of piano and backup vocals. Summers’ tenor and/or falsetto is high and cool – flawless and beautiful I’d say – and his words are quite moving and filled with deep emotion. With the next song “New” you’ll hear a steady, low drum beat and synths taking center stage on the melody. The mood here seems darker, but there’s a chill soulful groove to the song as well. Summers’ words read like he is taking a journey from deep, unimaginable grief, to a place where his heartache is shaken by the wind and washed by the rain. On “Nothing or Divine” Summers bares his deep-seated emotions with his words – “What am I but a thousand faces / encased in layered skins? / What a way to envision meaning! / Oh, what brings me here again?” This tune is perhaps Summers’ most stripped down with only him on vocal and playing keys. I could really sense his pain, just in the way he wrote this number and sang it. “A Moment Measured” begins with a full, a dreamy acoustic rhythm and later, additions of ambient/ethereal sound effects on keys come in making this tune sound very hypnotic. His lines – “The wickeds worth knowing / When love is a wound” – are words I couldn’t possibly relate to, nor have any remote chance of deciphering, but they stuck out to me, so I thought I should mention them. Next up is “Awake” and it was written from the perspective of Summers’ father, like a letter so to speak. As far as tempo, the song is perhaps the fastest one on the entire album, which makes for a nice contrast alongside the previous songs. To end the album is “Prophesized” and it begins with a light sounding electric and a great sounding snare rim shot. And then, the strings. Man, do I melt over strings, whether they are played on those funny looking wooden boxes called violins, or on keys. Then came the smooth sounds of the sax – this tune was well worth the wait. The melody, the rhythm, the vocals, just the overall production and arrangement of everything came together so well. Finally, I get a sense from Summers’ words that he has come to a place of resolution with his father’s suicide. A deep realization of what happened in the past, and maybe a place of accepting a “new” kind of relationship he has ten years on with the memory of his father. But as with every song on this album, there is more emotion than literal descriptive words. No doubt, A Fracture in the Light is a deeply personal journey of overwhelming loss and grief. But it also offers moments of joy and peace, too.
1 Comment
Harmony
8/26/2021 06:58:12 am
I can’t stop listening to this album.
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