SMALL TOWN SUNDAY EP, A COMPANION TO SUMMERSETS’ SMALL TOWN SATURDAY, SET FOR RELEASE AUGUST 6, 2021
WATCH AND SHARE “BEFORE YOU & I” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BEFORE YOU & I” (AVAILABLE FRIDAY) HERE
Photo Credit : Brittany Lucas // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
summersets want to tell you a story. More specifically, the story of how two people met on a Saturday night, and how that chance encounter led to a series of events that changed the course of each other's lives. No, this isn’t the origin story of summersets the band, but rather the narrative lore told over the course of an album that spans a fabled union from conception to conclusion. This initial idea was the inspiration behind Kalle Mattson and Andrew Sowka’s new duo project, summersets, and is the driving force behind their forthcoming EP small town sunday (out August 6), a collection of what the duo calls “story songs”.
small town sunday is a companion EP to their debut small town saturday. “We recorded in the same studio, reunited with all the same collaborators, and wrote about the same characters,” says Mattson. “When we started summersets almost a year and a half ago it came from a very natural place for Andrew and I. We were inspired by a lot of the same music from the late 60s to early 70s and I was writing all these songs that weren’t autobiographical for the first time.”
“Once I wrote “never love another”, which was on small town saturday, I had the blueprint of the story I wanted to tell across our songs,” continues Mattson. “The story of a relationship from the moment two people meet until one of them passes away.” small town sunday adds to that story with new narratives for each of the two characters from the relationship’s beginnings in “reciters” and “pass me by”, to the breakup and car crash in “afterthought” and “only you”, and finally the goodbye of “every tomorrow”.
WATCH AND SHARE “BEFORE YOU & I” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BEFORE YOU & I” (AVAILABLE FRIDAY) HERE
“before you & i” single artwork // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
MORE ABOUT SMALL TOWN SUNDAY EP
Once again produced by frequent collaborator Jim Bryson (Kathleen Edwards, The Weakerthans) small town sunday expands the scope of the duo’s musical palette from the breezy strummer “pass me by” to the midnight ballad “every tomorrow”. “Our first EP was an experiment in a lot of ways, not only in the narrative-based character songs, but in the instrumentation we used and the speed with which we recorded everything. We still wanted to reference a lot of the same music we grew up on, but also broaden our influences more this time” says Sowka. The blending of Mattson’s boyish vocals with Sowka’s melodic harmonies remains a high point throughout small town sunday, and conjures up the feeling of what a modern-day Simon and Garfunkel might sound like.
WATCH AND SHARE “ONLY YOU” VIDEO HERE
BUY / STREAM “ONLY YOU” HERE
Set in fictional Northern Ontario (where Mattson and Sowka are both from), small town sunday begins with a character’s daydream, ‘one Sunday morning I’ll be miles away’ on “reciters”, then leads into the other characters longing for somewhere else in the Tom Petty-influenced “pass me by” - ‘I was born by the edge of town, and I swore I’d be somewhere long gone by now’. The focal point of the album is the trio of “afterthought”, “only you” and “before you & i”, chronicling the two characters’ breakup and reconciliation years later from both perspectives, along with a car crash thrown in for good measure. ‘So is this how it ends? A wave in the night, as you’re driving in your car’ one character trembles in “afterthought”. ‘Why does everything look pretty, before it goes away’ the other character wonders, looking back in “only you”. ‘Before the years and the words I’m writing, before I’d turn it all around’ sing both of them, foreshadowing their reconciliation in “before you & i”.
As the second part of a three EP trilogy, small town sunday ends with a fitting conclusion to the story of summersets, but also the album’s two characters. ‘Somewhere you and I are together, somewhere our story’s being told.’ More to come…
WATCH AND SHARE “AFTERTHOUGHT” HERE
The 30-year-old Mattson first gained public attention by writing the Polaris Music Prize nominated 2014 album Someday, The Moon Will Be Gold, that dealt with the death of his mother who passed when he was 16 years old. It was during the recording and touring of that album that Mattson and Sowka began their longtime musical collaboration that eventually led them to form summersets in 2020. “Starting a new project that coincided with a global pandemic wasn’t exactly how we planned for this to go, but writing and recording about these fictional characters in the midst of so much uncertainty has brought us a lot of comfort and escapism,” says Mattson.
