The Dangerous Summer – The Dangerous Summer

This article has been imported from chorus.fm for discussion. All of the forum rules still apply.

More than any band I’ve ever loved, I associate The Dangerous Summer with a specific time and place. For three tumultuous summers, as I flailed about recklessly in the no-man’s land between youth and adulthood, there was no band on the planet that meant more to me. The summer of 2009 was encapsulated in the strains of their debut, Reach for the Sun, which caught me in the wake of my high school graduation as I wondered what the next chapter would hold. Their sophomore record, War Paint, played a similar role in the summer of 2011, which followed the worst semester of my life and forced me to question my dreams, my college major, and my entire view of my future. The summer in between was the one where I fell in love with the girl who I would marry, and I still remember driving home late at night from her house, feeling every note and every word of songs like “Northern Lights” and “Never Feel Alone.”

The Dangerous Summer never meant as much to me outside of those summers, or away from that town. This band was the soundtrack of growing up and of magical, lively Julys and Augusts in the town where I grew up—summers where the nights seemed to stretch on forever and the possibilities felt like they were truly endless. Once I finished college and left my hometown behind, it felt like The Dangerous Summer might not have anything left to say about my life. Hearing them again in the summer 2013—the summer after I finished college and tried to make a play for adulthood and the “real world”—the songs played like pale imitations of what I’d loved before. True, that year’s Golden Record was simply a sizable step down from the band’s peak. Even if it hadn’t been, though, I’m not sure it would have resonated with me personally. Again, this was a “time and place” band, and hearing them outside of that time and away from that place felt almost grotesque. It made me miss everything I’d left behind.

As I write these words, I’m sitting in the living room of the first house my wife and I have ever owned together. I’m surrounded by boxes filled with most of our belongings. The art that used to hang on the walls is stacked in the corner and the bookshelves that used to be filled with novels are completely empty. In three days, I will leave this house behind and never again call it home. Instead, we’re moving back to our real home, to the town where we grew up and went to high school. The town where we fell in love. The town where I heard so many songs and albums for the first time, and where I felt them so viscerally.

Amidst all of this, it feels so appropriate to be listening to a new Dangerous Summer album. Like many other fans, I was so sure for so long that we would never hear another album from this band. And like so many other fans, I wasn’t sure I wanted one. Golden Record left a bad taste in my mouth, and not just because the songwriting had taken a sharp decline. This band’s antics—particularly those of founding member and rhythm guitarist Cody Payne—had turned me off and made it so much harder for me to think of The Dangerous Summer fondly. Knowing that my last few years of youth had been soundtracked by the music of assholes and buffoons, it almost made me sick.

But things have changed. Cody Payne is gone, for one. The Dangerous Summer circa 2018 is vocalist AJ Perdomo, drummer Ben Cato, and guitarist Matt Kennedy (formerly of The Graduate). Perdomo is the only remaining founding member. By all accounts, The Dangerous Summer is a fresh start.

The music has changed, too. While the songs still sound like patent Dangerous Summer material (how could they not, with AJ’s distinctive gritty vocals?) the lyrics come from a very different place. The songs on Reach for the Sun and War Paint wore the angst and emotion of growing up proudly on their sleeves. Navigating the triumphs and pitfalls of love and relationships; bearing the weight of new responsibilities; becoming comfortable in your own skin; leaving home. These themes and others were prevalent on the first two Dangerous Summer LPs, and they are part of the reason those albums played so well for anyone who was between the ages of 15 and 30 when they came out.

The Dangerous Summer is subtler and more reflective. There are fewer breakup songs. There aren’t as many bridges that build to shattering emotional conclusions. Instead, of writing songs about growing up, AJ Perdomo is now writing songs about being grown up. “I wish every person that I knew was in one room right now/We’d drink until we die,” he sings on lead single “Fire.” “I’m talking ‘bout all my friends/I talk of the wars we fought back then/We’re getting older now/But we’re never giving in.” Those lines might as well be the thesis statement for the album.

The theme of looking back manifests itself repeatedly throughout these 10 tracks. Sometimes, the recollections are fond. On “When I Get Home,” Perdomo sings about the place and the people that built him. “When I get home/Gonna call my friends/We’ll party ‘til the morning comes/I feel so lucky I could die/I feel so lucky I could have this in my life/It’s what keeps me true.” Other times, the recollections ache with regret. “Ghosts” is about the person you loved when you were young who you can never quite shake. “How I speak to God is how I speak to you,” AJ sings, because he can’t ever stop having one-sided conversations with this girl in his head. She’s every summer, every red dress, and every hazy, half-remembered night, and he can’t rid his mind of the thought of her, even though he wants to.

Most often, the songs on The Dangerous Summer resonate with surprising maturity and wisdom. On “Luna,” a song written for (and named after) AJ’s daughter, he encourages her to “Stay wild as long as you can,” because that’s probably the advice most of us could give to our younger selves. And on “Live Forever,” he hits the flipside of the homecoming euphoria we heard on “When I Get Home.” “All my friends are still in London/We talk sometimes, it’s like nothing’s ever changed,” AJ bellows on the big, shout-along chorus. As you get older, your hometown shifts. It transforms from the place where you and your friends raised hell to a place where kids 10 or 20 years younger than you are doing the same thing. The scenery stays the same—at least mostly—but the characters change. Going home as an adult usually means reckoning with the fact that most of your friends don’t live there anymore. Many of them probably don’t even live in the same state. A few might not live in the same country.

As I sit here listening to these songs and writing these words, I ponder what going back home will mean for me now. I’ve never lost touch with the place I grew up. I got married there. I still have family there. I’ve spent every Christmas I can remember there. But yeah, things are different now, just like it’s different when I go back and listen to the band that defined my life when I was 18 or 19 or 20. The Dangerous Summer is an older, wiser, less hooky record from a band that once made me revel in all the recklessness and feeling of youth. Sometimes, though, I hear moments on this record and it’s like it’s the summer of 2009 again, with all the promise and uncertainty that season held. The knockout, gut-punch closing track—fittingly titled “Infinite”—is one of those moments. “Those unending nights, well they mean everything,” Perdomo sings in the evocative first verse, and it’s like he’s describing every minute I spent listening to his band all those years ago.

Timing is random, but it’s what makes music feel like magic sometimes. If this record had come out a year ago, I’m not sure what it would have meant to me. It might have been another Golden Record, an album from a band I used to love that didn’t strike a chord with me and where I was in my life. But hearing a song like “When I Get Home” today gives me all the same goosebumps I used to get from “I Would Stay” or “Weathered” or “No One’s Gonna Need You More.” “It’s still my home,” Perdomo sings at the end of the verses. For both the music and the place I’m going back to, those words ring true.

Expand - View Original