The Dangerous Summer strays from the band’s emo-punk formula on “Gravity”,… and it’s for the best. Let me explain.
A band with a name taken from a non-fiction book by Ernest Hemingway that plays a type of non-threatening guitar-driven emo, revels in angsty vocals, and has song titles like “Mother Nature,” “Polarity,” and “Reach for The Sun,” is easy to mistake as producing the kind of background music that a bunch of suburban kids would be blaring as they pull up to a Friday night high school football game and pile out of their mom’s Nissan Armada in their matching pastel polos, khaki shorts, and haircuts reminiscent of Fox Mulder circa 1993, ready to do battle with those less privileged.
Such assumptions are made a little too quickly, though. After all, there are always several brew-swilling bros at a Pearl Jam show drunkenly singing “Daughter” without an inkling of what the song is about or means. The Dangerous Summer, the band with the name taken from the Hemingway work, is topically one of those bands that might get passed over and written off as repetitive emo fodder for spoiled suburbanite larvae, but if you listen a little more closely, you might just hear something with a little more depth.
First off, the name of the band is fitting. This is not because the particular work that Hemingway wrote has anything to do with the band’s thematic content. Rather, the reference is fitting because, like Hemingway, The Dangerous Summer (the band) says a lot with very little.
Hemingway was revered for his stark prose which is all the more powerful for its minimalism. Hemingway chose his words, phrases, clauses, and sentences very carefully, eschewing flowery language and pretentious words. The same can be said of The Dangerous Summer in relation to their musical compositions. There are no wasted notes, chords, or shifts in tone or tempo.
Stand-out tracks from their latest release, Gravity, such as “Pacific Ocean,” perfectly embody the minimalist aesthetic. The Dangerous Summer is far from the first band to say a lot with a little. Musical predecessors like U2 and Jimmy Eat World, both cited by the band as influences, helped popularize the minimalist approach in rock and pop-punk. It’s a minimalism that The Dangerous Summer morphs into something that is all their own.
“Gravity” sports plenty of songs in the vein of The Dangerous Summer’s characteristic style with little deviation from their previous albums’ sound. The power of the songs lives just beneath the surface.
Fellow standout track, “With My Pen,” conjures a simmering angst that the aforementioned privileged clones might have bubbling underneath their high school clone veneer. It’s a song that wants to break loose, release the “colours in my mind,” and leave behind the pastel polos “before I drown,” as singer AJ Perdomo sings.
“Clouds in My Eyes” threatens to slip into solipsism with its mentions of “never seeing Springsteen” and name-dropping “New Jersey,” but Perdomo’s delivery wipes away all snickers such name-dropping can elicit and instead conjures a heartfelt emotional (not emo) atmosphere that feels authentic instead of indulgent.
So while The Dangerous Summer might be the safe soundtrack to upper-middle-class SUV cruising, beneath the surface, the band seethes with emotional weight. It’s all about the fears of approaching adulthood, realizing that the world doth not revolve around thee, and that you’ll just need to hold on for the next semester.