Little Kennedy, the side project from Matt Kennedy of The Dangerous Summer, has released a video for the new song “Sawdust (On Everything).” The song is also out on all streaming platforms.
Read More “Little Kennedy – “Sawdust (On Everything)” Video”
The Dangerous Summer have shared the video for their new song “Come Down.”
Read More “The Dangerous Summer – “Come Down” Video” The Dangerous Summer will be releasing a live album on Friday. Pre-orders are up.
Read More “The Dangerous Summer Announce Live Album”
The Dangerous Summer have all of their albums available on vinyl in their store.
Read More “The Dangerous Summer Restock Vinyl” The Dangerous Summer have returned with a video for “Fuck Them All.”
Read More “The Dangerous Summer – “Fuck Them All” Video” The Dangerous Summer have launched a new webstore and will be releasing the new single “Fuck Them All” on July 10th. You can check out a preview on YouTube.
Read More “The Dangerous Summer Launch New Merch” AJ Perdomo of The Dangerous Summer is the latest guest on the Mike Herrera podcast. (Overcast link.)
The Dangerous Summer have announced that they’re going independent and are working on new music. It also looks like Aaron Gillespie will be playing drums on the new songs.
Read More “The Dangerous Summer Go Independent” The Dangerous Summer are tracking vocals for a new single.
The Dangerous Summer have announced a ten-year anniversary tour for Reach for the Sun.
Read More “The Dangerous Summer Announce Ten-Year Anniversary Tour”
The Dangerous Summer have released their new song “Starting Over / Slow Down.”
Read More “The Dangerous Summer – “Starting Over / Slow Down””
Expectations can mess with your mind as a music fan. We all have favorite bands, but there’s a weird sort of contradiction where those favorite bands are also the ones most likely to disappoint us. Hearing a new record from an unfamiliar artist and having it blow the doors off your mind is a wonderful kind of madness, but it’s also impossible to replicate. Loving an album means accumulating baggage with it—the baggage of years and memories and emotions entwined with the songs. When the next album from that same band comes along, it’s easy to feel let down. Even if the record is good—even if it’s great—expecting it to recapture the magic of the first time is a recipe for disappointment. Virtually every band or artist that has ever made a beloved album contends with this cycle eventually, and it’s part of the reason why most bands don’t last very long. It’s also why maybe the only thing more exciting than having that lightning bolt moment with a new band is hearing one of your favorite artists raise the bar, change the game, and shatter every expectation you had of what their music could sound like, circa right now.
Mother Nature, the fifth LP from The Dangerous Summer, is that kind of album. It takes a band that previously felt like a faded version of its glory days and breathes immense new life into their sound. It makes you excited for this band again, and for what their path might look like going forward. It creates spine-tingling moments of pure catharsis, but in a different way than this band did on their previous beloved albums, 2009’s Reach for the Sun and 2011’s War Paint. And it immediately makes reservations for whole lot of windows-down, sunny-day drives this summer. It’s the right album, at the right time, from a band a lot of people had written off or counted out. And it feels fucking great.
The Dangerous Summer have released a video for “Bring Me Back To Life.”
Read More “The Dangerous Summer – “Bring Me Back To Life” Video”
It’s funny the way that albums can mark time. How hearing the right songs at the right moment can make them sound like more than songs, or how going back to those songs after 10 or 15 or 20 years can reawaken every feeling you had when you first heard them. It’s funny, too, how the music that does those things to you might not do anything for anyone else. How something can be an incredibly meaningful and important document of your past, but just sound run-of-the-mill to someone else. Or how, if you’d heard an album a decade or a year or six months too early or too late, it might just be a footnote in your musical history rather than a symphony.
No album has ever taken me more by surprise than The Dangerous Summer ‘s Reach for the Sun. I didn’t see it coming, and I wasn’t looking for it. I had no knowledge of the band or their past work, no clue what they sounded like or what their songs might have to say about my life. I just read a rave review of the album one day on AbsolutePunk and decided to give it a shot. Ten years later, those songs still shoot shivers down my spine and choke me up, because they sound like the cusp of adulthood, and like all the friends and memories I’ve left behind in the past decade.
Reach for the Sun had remarkable timing. Its release date was May 5, 2009, just as spring was bursting into full, glorious bloom. I first heard it on May 3, in the early evening, coming out of old boombox speakers in my bedroom, with the gentle glow of the sunset streaming through my window. The day before, my sister had graduated from college. In another month, I’d graduate from high school. My parents and I had driven home, from Ann Arbor to Traverse City, that afternoon. I had a boatload of calculus homework to do and was dreading the evening. AP exams were just days away, and I needed to buckle down and focus. Certainly, I knew I needed a good soundtrack for the study session. So I downloaded this record on the recommendation of a glowing 95 percent review from Blake Solomon and loaded it onto my iPod.
The Dangerous Summer have released a video for “Way Down.”
