Deep Dive: Endearments – Summersun

We were particularly taken with the retro flavours of Endearments’ Summersun, and its sliding doors style video.

Like their previous single, Real Deal, you can pick up resonances of Youth Group and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, but the band look to other sources of inspiration on Summersun.

We caught up with the band’s vocalist, Kevin Marksson, to chat about the song, which is from their upcoming album, An Always Open Door.

Genesis of Summersun and its lyrics

I’m not a particularly prolific songwriter, so in mid-2024, at the behest of a friend, I joined a weekly songwriting group to get me focused. That experience got me digging back into some bands and music that I hadn’t listened to in a long, long time for inspiration.

You can really hear the influence of Silversun Pickups and Youth Group in this song; it’s like 2006 guitar-rock meets 1980s synthesizers. The first pass lyrics were more pointed than the final version. It was about watching someone change themselves over and over to please others.

When we cut things down for length, the song became a lot more introspective; more about myself and how no one is immune from making that kind of mistake.

Instrumentation and recording

We went full tilt on Summersun with the guitars. Anjali would record her guitar ideas at home for the demo tracks and then send them back to me to mix and mess around with. She sent a lot of different takes for this one, and I think it surprised her when I used all of them.

Abe Seiferth was also the perfect producer for this because he’s a guitarist who really loves synths. The tones Abe and Anjali got for the final song are just outstanding – there are some sparkly guitar lines in the verses that are almost indistinguishable from synthesizers – and the choruses really rip. This song also has my absolute favorite bass line on the whole album.

Making the video

I wanted a music video that captured that same self-searching feeling as the lyrics. When I brought the idea to Paul Desilva (our director), he immediately suggested we do it on Super 8 film. We actually rode the Stillwell Ave subway line for both sets of footage, but we shot on different days and at different stations.

We even filmed on different trains for each of our actors (the Q for Maddie and the D for Steven) to give each of their scenes a unique flavor. The moment they both sit down on the bench near the end of the video was originally meant to be a kind-of meet-cute, but that felt like it went against the spirit of the song, so we chose to have it play out on split screen instead.

Where does this particular track fit within your wider body of work?

Summersun is the opening track on our upcoming full-length, and it really sets the tone for the rest of the album. Musically we’ve gotten a lot rockier on this new record, to the point where we’ve been hesitant to even use the term dreampop to describe the music.

Lyrically and melodically, however, we’re still in that very emotional pocket that I like our songs to inhabit. I would say that our last two EPs, It Can Be Like This and Father of Wands, were a lot more outward-looking, and the songs on An Always Open Door are much more turned inward.

The difference is that I was writing about events and emotions while they were still fresh on those EPs, versus now looking back on them with the benefit of experience and hindsight.

What are you up to in the coming months?

We’re in the homestretch before the album drops! We’ll be playing shows in NYC to promote the singles, doing some festival dates in March, and then an LP release party when we get back. Hopefully we’ll follow that up with some tour dates in the spring. Stay tuned!

An Always Open Door is out on the 6^th of March via Trash Casual and can be pre-ordered in a limited-edition vinyl version on Bandcamp. Catch up with Endearments on Instagram and Facebook for album news, and you can find ticket details of their New York gig on the 6^th of February right here.

Header photo by Rita Iovine