Soft Vein’s Another Summer walks into the long-held mythology of summer breeziness with a raised eyebrow and a very good synthesizer. Justin Chamberlain treats the season less as paradise than as evidence: proof that time keeps circling back while the people inside it become harder to recognize.
The title carries its own little cruelty. Another chance, another repetition, another invitation to believe that whatever went wrong might somehow correct itself on the next pass. Chamberlain sounds far too experienced to buy the brochure. His interest lies in the distance between recurrence and recovery, and in the uncomfortable realization that repetition rarely restores what has already changed.
Soft Vein has been pushing further into new wave and synthpop this year, and Another Summer may be Chamberlain’s sharpest turn in that direction yet. There is plenty of mid-’80s Peter Gabriel and Robert Palmer in its bloodstream, especially in the combination of clipped electronic percussion, broad keyboards, soulful vocal phrasing, and a hook built with enough confidence to survive outside the black-clad electronic underground. Chamberlain has found a sweet spot between pop polish and emotional frostbite.
The bass is wonderfully round and physical, moving beneath the track with the lazy certainty of something expensive rolling down an empty boulevard. Keyboards spread outward in great glassy planes while Chamberlain’s emotive voice occupies the center with an appealing mixture of restraint, desire, and resignation. He sings like a man who has learned that romantic memory becomes increasingly unreliable the more often you consult it.
Cameron Noel Dunbar filmed the video during a visit to Soft Vein’s rehearsal studio a couple of weeks ago, capturing Chamberlain and his live band preparing for their upcoming shows. The footage offers an intimate portrait of the musicians together before heading out on the road, preserving the shared concentration and easy familiarity of rehearsal.
Dunbar layers the rehearsal footage with psychedelic superimpositions, letting faces double, equipment drift through bodies, and colors smear across gestures. The room gradually starts behaving like memory itself: imperfect, cumulative, prone to placing several moments on top of each other. That treatment suits a song preoccupied with desire and repetition, while the footage preserves something more immediate: the pleasure of being in a room together, preparing to bring these songs to an audience.
Watch the video for Another Summer below:
- September 30 — Dallas, TX — Dada Dallas — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 1 — Austin, TX — Elysium — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 2 — San Antonio, TX — Paper Tiger — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 3 — Houston, TX — White Oak Music Hall — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 6 — New Orleans, LA — The Crypt — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 8 — Tampa, FL — New World Brewery — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 9 — Miami, FL — Las Rosas — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 10 — Orlando, FL — The Abbey — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 12 — Atlanta, GA — The Drunken Unicorn — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 14 — Durham, NC — Stanczyks — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 15 — Richmond, VA — Richmond Music Hall — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 16 — Philadelphia, PA — Johnny Brenda’s — with ULTRA SUNN
- October 17 — New York, NY — Le Poisson Rouge — with ULTRA SUNN
- November 3 — Salt Lake City, UT — Quarters Arcade Bar
- November 4 — Denver, CO — The Crypt
- November 6 — Seattle, WA — Funhouse
- November 7 — Portland, OR — The Coffin Club
- November 11 — Sacramento, CA — The Starlet Room
- November 12 — Santa Ana, CA — La Santa Modern Cantina
- November 13 — San Diego, CA — Kensington Club
- November 15 — Las Vegas, NV — Bizarre Bar
- November 17 — San Francisco, CA — DNA Lounge
- November 18 — Fresno, CA — Fulton 55
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