Q&A: Summerbruise Gets Real About Fake Emo
INTERVIEW
INTERVIEW
☆ BY STEWART SHORT ☆
Photo by Nat Breeden
SUMMERBRUISE IS BACK, BIGGER, AND BETTER THAN EVER BEFORE — The self-proclaimed fake emo band releases their latest album Infinity Guise today. To say this album is a milestone for the band would be an understatement. This is the band’s first album on their new label, SideoneDummyRecords, and their first record with their newly expanded official lineup. Previously a smaller group with collaborators of varying frequency led by lyricist and vocalist Mike Newman, Summerbruise now cements themselves as a fully realized band alongside Newman with Stanli Fryman on drums, John Parkison on bass, and guitarists Mitch Gulish and Cora Kunda.
On this record, the band has fine tuned a sound that carves out their own unique niche in the scene in addition to providing the ideal sonic backbone to the album’s immersive lyrical exploration of social burnout and emotional introspection.
Luna Collective sat down with Mike Newman and John Parkison to talk about the band’s newly established lineup, the work they put in on Infinity Guise, and getting back out on the road and touring.
LUNA: You've self described the band as a fake emo band, and I wanted to ask about what that phrase means and embracing that as the key descriptor for Summerbruise.
NEWMAN: I think emo is a genre that gets thrown around, as loose as just about… I can't think of another example of a bunch of bands that just sort of tour together and hang out and are just labeled with the same genre descriptor or whatever. It's just unique to emo, I feel like. Not necessarily unique to emo, but then there's that percentage of people that do care a lot about accurately describing genre and real emo being certain things or whatever. I know that in the first sense we're absolutely an emo band, but in the second sense, we are absolutely not an emo band, and just kind of a funny way to get ahead of that and make a joke of the fact. It felt like the shortest way to describe our genre of like, we're emo, but like, I know, you know, in so many words; I feel like fake emo really gets it across.
Album art by Ethan Mastan
LUNA: It truncates any discussion about whether the label fits, or, you know, an acknowledgement of how absurd it is, how much people fight over what's emo and what's not.
NEWMAN: Yes, exactly, and it does truly give you an idea of what you're in for. You'll understand what I meant by emo, and you're also going to be ready. That goofiness is kind of inherent in all of our shit too. We're a pretty goofy band, so I think having a goofy sounding genre fits.
LUNA: This is the first record with the band's expanded lineup. You've grown into a fully fledged band. Can you talk about what that growth looked like going into this recording process and how that collaboration has changed the songwriting and recording process for Summerbruise?
NEWMAN: Going into this process was the biggest change it’s ever been. Even with the lineup changes and expansions or whatever, everything before the split with Saturdays a few years ago like The View Never Changes, our most recent full-length release, and everything before that, I had written. It wouldn't be fair to say “solo project,” because Bummer Vacation was written with our first drummer, Castle, and he had a lot of input and stuff, and Stanli, there are people that were around. I remember John when he was just filling in, which Always Something song did you help me write John? Do you remember?
PARKISON: “Never Lucky.”
NEWMAN: “Never Lucky,” yeah. So, I definitely had a lot of help and influence from other people, but everything before The View Never Changes, I did most of the songwriting. The View Never Changes specifically was a COVID project, so all of those demos, I wrote the drums, I wrote the bass, I wrote every little bit of that. The demos are pretty close to the final record, like all of that was, meticulously written by me. Then this one was the complete opposite where most of the songs started with some sort of random riff I had saved, or a little voice memo or whatever. I organized all the random crap on my computer from GarageBand and little ideas I had, sent that to the band, and then I didn't touch any of the songs until they were done. I was just working on lyrics and kind of being around. So then John, how did you guys write the songs?
PARKISON: In the first writing session that we did, I know that at my parents’ house, me and Stanli cooked a lot together, and you and Mitch cooked a lot together. I think that kind of helped us, that we were able to split up gang and kind of divvy up the responsibilities, instead of leaving it all up to Mike. I think that's why the lyrics on this record are of, well, not even of the best, they just are [the best songs] of the Summerbruise catalog. Mike had a lot of time to just focus on the pen instead of trying to write guitar parts and stuff. I'm first and foremost a drummer, so playing bass with a drummer like Stanli, I am the luckiest bass player in the world; I have an understanding of drums, but also play in a band with the best drummer in the world, so it was really easy for Stanli and I to lock in parts. Stanli wrote some bass parts as well, and so we switch back and forth. Sometimes when I didn't have a good idea, she did, and she always has good ideas, so I just hype her up. I think that the other four of us in the band really had an opportunity to make our mark in comparison to previous works. I feel like this record is the new beginning, I guess.
NEWMAN: We've been throwing around Summerbruise 2.0 and really do mean, like it is a completely different band.
PARKISON: I'm also glad that Mike is recognizing that as well, because I mean the sound isn't that different.
NEWMAN: Yeah, it doesn't sound like a new band, but behind the scenes, yeah we're different.
PARKISON: We are exploring. I feel like, with this record, we are exploring new sounds, not new genres or anything. We're bringing things into our fake emo sphere.
NEWMAN: Right. All of the influence on all the Summerbruise records still mostly was one guy's influences. Castle obviously brought a lot to Bummer Vacation, I don't want to take anything away from that. But from that, for the most part, and then this was Mitch and Cora and Stanli and John who all have widely different musical tastes and interests and shit writing a Summerbruise record. Having this distant North Star, but just writing songs together that the four of them would kind of come up with together… everything sounds like, “I can't believe this is Summerbruise,” because it sounds so crazy and different, but also nothing sounds like, “this doesn't even sound like Summerbruise.”
LUNA: I definitely get what you're saying about that evolving sound. I wanted to follow up, John, because you mentioned finding that sound for this record. One of the things that stuck with me was that very propulsive and driving and almost tangible rhythm section, the bass and the drums, and then you've got that woven in with all the memorable guitar parts. Could you talk about finding what that sound was going to be for this record?
PARKISON: I wouldn't say I'm patting ourselves on the back, but we're kind of in our prime right now. We're like prime LeBron James right now, really. I feel like these are the best songs that we have ever written, but also, these are the first songs that we as a five-piece have ever written. I think we're really lucky in that sense that this is technically our fourth release, but this is our first release as this new group. I think we're really lucky in that sense, that we've been playing music together for a really long time, and we all kind of get each other. I feel like we are kind of able to just naturally work things through. We don't really have to talk much, we just kind of have to play, and then if something doesn't work out, we just repeat it, and then we'll figure something out. I don't think we have to use words all that often. We just kind of have to use sounds or Hambone.
NEWMAN:I think the the X factor in this band is that all four of the other people in it are insanely talented in their own right, and all play in other bands, playing different instruments, doing amazing shit—with the exception of Stanli, who's been in the band the longest, so she still would have every reason to know it just as well.
LUNA: It’s great that you've got all that collaborative history, and it just adds that X factor to the alchemy that really makes the music pop. Mike—lyrically, the record balances the sort of open book emotional vulnerability with a little bit of tongue in cheek self awareness and the humor element. It's a very delicate balance. Does that come naturally when you're writing? Is that something you're consciously thinking of balance wise?
NEWMAN: Yeah, a little bit of both. I don't think I consciously think about the balance… but it definitely comes naturally. My first ever attempt at writing a song, I wasn't trying to write a song. I was drunk one night and wanted to just try doing something creative as just like an outlet for some feelings I was feeling. I tried to write a stand up comedy bit. I was looking at it the next day, and it was not very funny, but I did turn that into a song. I was like, well, shit. This was when I was like, 23 and I had played guitar since high school, I played drum since I was 12, but any time I'd ever tried to write any sort of lyrics, it was just fucking shit from a butt. I was just like, “I can't write songs. I'll never write a song, and that's fine.” I decided that when I was, like, 16, and then at 23 I'm looking at this stand up bit, and I'm like, “Well, I could just make that rhyme, and then that's kind of funny, and like, hot damn, maybe I can just start writing songs.” All of this is to say the funny, confessional, self aware nature comes from me being equally as interested in comedy as I am in lyricism.
LUNA: With the lyrics on the album, there's these very striking and immersive, kind of visceral narrations of emotional spirals and that introspective element. If you had to kind of narrow it down to a few words, how would you describe kind of the overarching themes of the record?
NEWMAN: I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was around 22-23 but then in the last couple of years have sort of self discovered, as the kids are saying now that I'm autistic as well, I also have OCD. All of this is to say, the ADHD thing I've been living with for a long time, the OCD and the autism things came up within like, a few years of each other, and just like, explained a lot of difficult behavior, but not in a very satisfying way, just in kind of like a frustrating way. And it's about the struggles of, like, feeling neurodivergent and not having the words for it yet I guess. Not to say, like, that's, it's just an album for people like me or whatever.
LUNA: That's a great way to put it. There's a couple of featured artist appearances from some folks who you've shared the stage with in the past, like Tades Sanville from Hot Mulligan and Stoph Colasanto from Carpool. How did those collaborations come about? What did the collaborations look like on those songs?
NEWMAN: Stoph has been one of our best friends forever. As soon as we were working on a record— we were doing it on Long Island and he lives in Brooklyn—it was already a given that he was going to be involved somehow. It's just kind of a matter of which song. That one, we had an instrumental that sounded pretty heavy and then Stanli had this lead for it that sounded exactly like a carpool lead. So, that was just obviously the song we earmarked to be the Stoph feature. The lyrics came about when Stoph was in the studio, just like hanging out, and I was outside with Mitch and Nick. I think John—I don't remember if John was playing with them or outside with us—but Stanli’s playing drums and Stoph was playing guitar, and they were just jamming something, I thought. I was like, “Oh, shit, that's tight. I think I have something for this.” I ran in there, and I grab my computer, and I start typing up a bunch of lyrics to what they're playing and kind of singing in my head. When they stop, I'm like, “I think I have something for that.” Stoph is like, “that's a Carpool song, dawg.” I had all these lyrics lying around, so I just put them on our other song that sounded like Carpool and “Van” was born.
Photo by Nat Breeden
LUNA: Awesome. And “Cookie Monster Snap Back” with Tades, that’s another fun one.
NEWMAN: We we were playing “Ants Marching” by [Dave Matthews Band] in the studio, just jamming it because we fucking love that song. Then Mitch started doing it with emo chords, which we all found very funny. I had some lyrics in my notes that I just started screaming, like Tades. We thought it was funny, like Dave Matthews, but Hot Mulligan, and then that song unaltered is “Cookie Monster Snap Back;” we just kept it as is. If you listen to the two side by side, it really shines through that they're quite similar.
We've just been friends with Tades for even longer than we've known Stoph even. We just texted him, and he had a bunch of stuff coming up with a South America tour, and they were in the studio working on their album that just came out, so he said he probably isn't gonna be able to do it, but he really wishes he could. Then with maybe a week to spare, he texted me and was like, “I think I can get to the studio this afternoon,” so we're scrambling to get all this stuff sent over and blah, blah, blah, but he was able to do it, which was really exciting.
LUNA: You've already had tours this year with TRSH and Equipment, and I just saw the tour announced with Dear Maryanne in the fall. How's life on the road been treating you guys? Do you ever get a chance to take a break? I mean, you're in between tours right now, but you've got this whole album roll out. How's the year been for you?
NEWMAN: We're going on a pretty long break right now. It feels like the gap between the Equipment tour in June and this November tour has felt super long, for me.
PARKISON: Oh yeah, very nice. Because that tour ended at the very end of June. So we've had July, August, September, October, and I think this one starts November 5th, I think. So we've had a handful of months off.
NEWMAN: Yeah, we still got more time off to go. The album roll out is busy, in the sense of, like, we've got like, a couple zoom calls every week, and like, I have the occasional like, task I have to bang out at work, like, you know, type some shit about the songs to send to the PR people or whatever. But other than that, it's not very busy, it's more just kind of fun, like, once a month, a single comes out, and I just get to spend all day at work, reading nice stuff about our shit on the internet. That's been a bonus on top of the break. It definitely hasn't added any sort of business or stress to the break.
LUNA: That's fun. So are you looking forward to getting back out on the road in the fall?
NEWMAN: Fucking god yes, I'm so bored. I said “it’s been long,” and John said, “yeah, it's been nice,” and I was like, “I'm bored” (laughs). I'm really ready to go on tour.
PARKISON: Well, yeah, give me, like, another week, and I'll probably be itching to get back out.
