Summer Camp.
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.
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Bad Love is out on 5.26 via Moshi Moshi Records.