Summer Camp — Bad Love

                                       ^{Summer Camp — Bad Love}
••–   “...the darkness in a human relationship.”
Location: London, UK
Album release: May 25th, 2015
Record Label: Moshi Moshi Records
Duration:     38:42    
Tracks:    
01 Bad Love     2:57
02 You´re Gone     3:12
03 Sleepwalking     3:27
04 Beautiful     3:18
05 Horizon     3:55
06 Run Away     2:26
07 Angela     4:10
08 Drive Past My House     3:50
09 If You Hate Me     4:23
10 Everlasting     3:56
11 Keep Up     3:18
Members:
→   Jeremy Warmsley
→   Elizabeth Sankey

REVIEW
by KATE SOLOMON, May 20th, 2015, SCORE: 8
••–   The songs on Summer Camp’s Bad Love describe relationships so familiar I can pin the names of boys I have had romantic misadventures with to each one. The banging disco–pop single ‘Bad Love’ is J, the guy who let me down, then I let down, then I let him let me down again even though I knew exactly what was coming. ‘You’re Gone’ is a fuzzed–out reflection on what it’s like to disappear into the feelings you have for someone who’s not so into you — it’s the memory of C, my first kiss, my first unrequited love, the first chips in my heart.
••–   ‘Beautiful’ is every guy I’ve ever crushed on so hard it felt like I might die if I didn’t get to have them. It’s made of all the emotions that conspire to convince you that Taylor Hanson would definitely fall in love with you if only you could get him in a room for five minutes. ‘Just Fine’ is how I felt before I broke up with M, while ‘Run Away’ is how I felt doing it. ‘Feel Right’ is what it felt like right afterwards and ‘So Wrong’ is the song that might have made me think twice if only I’d heard it beforehand instead of three years later. ‘So Happy So Sad’ is basically me at a certain point in every relationship I’ve ever been in, most of all with A. ‘Catch Me’ is kind of a fuck you to J again, while ‘We Are The Moon’ is a slow–jam ‘How Soon Is Now’ and the secret tryst I never had with B. ‘Keep Up’ is all the guys who never called and yeah, fuck those idiots too.
••–   These are love songs, but not as you know them. In Bad Love, Summer Camp has written an 11–song essay about the hopeless side of love, the side you know is no good but you can’t help wanting. The heartache might hurt, but it hurts in a good way — the kind of pain you keep prodding with visits to their Facebook profile to see if it still stings. It all feels real in the way that a dream feels... real. This is what Summer Camp do so brilliantly; they create a world that you can wander around and get lost in for 40 minutes, a world where everything is very slightly askew. The magic happens in the little pauses and spaces in the songs, when you’re waiting for the thing you know is going to happen to happen. It’s inevitable that after “This is real in the way that a dream feels” you’re going to get “real” but there’s that pause. That moment. That beat that your heart skips.
••–   There’s something inherently nostalgic about the album; musically it’s full of the echo–laden power synth of the Eighties, but there’s something very adolescent about it too. Like a teen movie, Bad Love feels like a shortcut to whatever era you came of age in. If I had a pencil case, I’d be scribbling Elizabeth Sankey’s endlessly quotable lyrics all over it right now, while lines like “I think sometimes you cradle that empty hole in your heart” would make a killer pass–agg MySpace coverline. It’s perhaps no wonder that Summer Camp had the ups and downs of teen love in mind after their previous release, the soundtrack to teen–movie docu–mixtape Beyond Clueless. There’s no genre that navigates the hormone–driven minefield of romance quite like the teen movie. That filmic structure seems to have translated well to Bad Love as well; songs swoop and dive into one another, punctuated by killer bass lines, the odd spoken word and abrupt mid–sentence cut–offs.
••–   The best love songs are the ones that make you want to dance and cry all at once; and Bad Love has them in spades. ••–   http://drownedinsound.com/                                                 © Charlotte Rutherford, Summer Camp
Artist Biography by Jason Lymangrover
••–   U.K. artists Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey started making music together as Summer Camp in October of 2009, and their sunny wash of mellow C–86 pop was a timely fit with the lo–fi synth pop craze (coined "chillwave") that was sweeping the States. With their identity concealed, Warmsley and Sankey posted a short series of videos that went viral due to their clever usage of old gauzy movie footage — "Ghost Train" rearranged the tame scenes from the 1969 X–rated film Last Summer, and "Round the Moon" borrowed clips from the '70s romantic teen drama A Swedish Love Story. Teen heartache in movies became an ongoing theme for Warmsley and Sankey, and as well as the aforementioned songs, Summer Camp's debut EP included songs about "Veronica Sawyer" (Winona Ryder's character in Heathers) and "Jake Ryan" (the boy–crush of Molly Ringwald's character in Sixteen Candles). Moshi Moshi released the Young EP in November of 2010. The duo recorded their second album with Pulp's Steve Mackey co–producing, and Welcome to Condale was released in late October of 2011 by Apricot and Moshi Moshi. The following year, Summer Camp toured the album across the U.K., released an EP (Always) in July, then spent the rest of the year writing songs for their third album. With production by Stephen Street (the Smiths, Blur), 2013's Summer Camp was the duo's most accomplished–sounding record to date.
Discography:
••–   2011 Welcome to Condale    Moshi Moshi Records
••–   2013 Summer Camp    Moshi Moshi Records
••–   2015 Bad Love    Moshi Moshi Records
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/summer-camp/bad-love
••–   Summer Camp have always admitted a debt to the silver screen, most recently providing the soundtrack for 'Beyond Clueless' — a documentary focussing on teen movies.
••–   The video for 'Bad Love' though, takes this one step further. A comment on modern horror flicks, the clip was shot at Elstree Studios — where Star Wars and The Shining were filmed.
••–   Luke Snellin took charge of the video, with added appearances from Bill Milner and Jessica Barden. Featuring plenty of teen screams from Liz and an immaculate quiff from Jeremy, it's both hugely entertaining and an intriguing commentary on horror movies over the past two decades.
••–   Elizabeth Sankey: “We had the idea to make something along the lines of an American teen horror flick like Scream or I Know What You Did Last Summer, but where the real evil isn't a faceless killer but the darkness in a human relationship.”
PREMIERES
By Kim Taylor Bennett
••–   Full disclosure: Elizabeth Sankey, one half of Summer Camp, writes for Noisey all the time. We encourage her to wax lyrical about 90s fashion, Clueless, the timeless appeal of Almost Famous and whatnot because she's funny and weird and insightful and passionate. The fact that she's in a kickass band with her real life lover (Jeremy Warmsley), and they write music that's a fuzzy and cute as a mohair croptop sweater, but with the bite of a tequila shot.
••–   Another fun fact about Summer Camp: when they first emerged in the late 2000s they put a bunch of tunes up on MySpace and spliced together some old 70s family vacation "found" footage for videos and everyone got super excited and speculated in hushed tones that Summer Camp were a super cool crew from Sweden. Incorrect! Eventually they were revealed to be a couple London kids, and Warmsely had already released several solo works under his own name. Good work! Since then they've released two records, 2011's Welcome to Condale (as moreish as My So–Called Life episodes and produced by Pulp's Steve Mackey), and Summer Camp, back in 2013 (produced by Stephen Street, most famous for producing some sweet Blur records).
••–   Apart from touring and writing this record, most recently the duo were busy working on the soundtrack for Beyond Clueless, a film by Charlie Lyne which dissects teenage film tropes and is narrated by actress Fairuza Balk (The Craft!). It's pretty amazing — both in terms of the soundtrack and the film itself — and you can read Sankey's interview with the director here.
••–   But back to this third album — which is streaming below for the first time — a week ahead of its release on Moshi Moshi Records. Like the title suggests, Bad Love is a “concept record about all the different types of bad love that a person can experience.” It's the first full–length the duo have produced by themselves.
••–   “When we started, we had just finished the soundtrack to Beyond Clueless and wanted to continue writing with the same process, allowing the music to act as an emotional counterpoint to the lyrics,” explains Sankey. “We were inspired by 90s Point Horror and Fear Street books and teen horror films, and the idea that a bad relationship can be just as terrifying as a serial killer. We wanted a create a world where people could lose themselves, and portray a horror that wasn't physical but emotional.”
••–   Apart from the title track, standout tracks include "You're Gone," which sees Jeremy take the lead vocal (with added distorted oompf), the sparse synth–pop of "Get Away" ("The truth is we're the product of nothing / Just a collection of the things that we've done"), and the new wave, Cure–ish cool of "Drive Past My House" which is all about leaving your past in the rearview mirror and getting the fuck outta this one horse town. Eat dust suckers! Also sweet bassline guys.  http://noisey.vice.com/
Discography:
Albums:
••–   Welcome to Condale, 31 October 2011, Moshi Moshi, 2011 (digital, CD, 12")
••–   Summer Camp, 9 September 2013, Moshi Moshi, 2013 (digital, CD, 12")
••–   Beyond Clueless (original soundtrack), 4 August 2014, Moshi Moshi, 2014 (digital, 12")
••–   Bad Love, 25 May 2015, Moshi Moshi, 2015 (digital, CD, 12")
EPs:
••–   Young, September 6, 2010, Moshi Moshi (digital, CD)
••–   Always, June 29, 2012, Apricot (digital, 10")
Singles:
••–   "Ghost Train" — 12 April 2010, Moshi Moshi (digital, 1000 run 7")
••–   "Round The Moon" — 6 September 2010, Moshi Moshi (digital, 1000 run 7")
••–   "Better Off Without You" — 2011, Moshi Moshi (digital)
••–   "Down" — October 2011, Moshi Moshi (digital)
Website: http://www.wearesummercamp.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/summercampband
Tumblr: http://summercampmusic.tumblr.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/summercampmusic   //   Notes: ••–   My piece for noiseymusic about making our video for ‘Bad Love’ at Elstree Studios.  If you were an extra in it you’re probably in one of these photos!  Feat. Bill Milner, Jessica Barden, Luke Snellin and that Jeremy Warmsley bro.
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Summer Camp — Bad Love

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