Swim Good :: "Summer Solstice"

Jon Lawless returns for the second-single, "Summer Solstice" as Swim Good - the previous effort "Totally A Mess Wild" has functionally disappeared from the Internet. "Summer Solstice" is a snapping synthesizer jam, an upbeat UB40 keyboard riff mixing with a whirring drum loop. With the addition of yelps and the synth horns that showed up all over the First Rate People demos back in 2009, Lawless has here built something entirely ebullient. Lyrically referencing a year-later-on "Solstice", Lawless drawls, "I think I used to play favorites back in 2010/I think I used to play favorites and now I'm doing it again." While absolute clarity is absent in a statement like this, it is the gift of the singer to make it feel relevant anyway, a singable hook about not growing out of old habits. Soon enough, played favorites or not, "Summer Solstice", like the ever collapsing days it describes, evaporates into well-remembered nostalgia.