SUMMERSETS IS THE DUO COLLABORATION BETWEEN KALLE MATTSON AND ANDREW SOWKA
DEBUT EP, SMALL TOWN SATURDAY, OUT AUGUST 21, 2020
WATCH AND SHARE “NEVER LOVE ANOTHER” HERE
BUY / STREAM “NEVER LOVE ANOTHER” HERE
PRE-ORDER SMALL TOWN SATURDAY VIA BANDCAMP
“...a melancholic reminder of far off travels, calmingly reassured by Mattson and Sowka’s charming vocal and guitar melodies. It’s easy on the ears, and easier on the heart." - Dusty Organ ( on “anywhere you go”)
PHOTO CREDIT : Brittany Lucas // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Picture this: two people meet in small town northern Ontario on a Saturday night as summer is coming to end. A chance encounter that eventually will define the narrative of the rest of their lives. That is both the story that runs through the debut record by summersets, and also how the new duo’s members, Kalle Mattson and Andrew Sowka, met growing up in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
The 6-song EP Small Town Saturday started out as an experiment in writing character-based songs for Mattson and acts as the first chapter in a larger full-length album. “I had the idea of writing a song that tracked a relationship from the very beginning of two people meeting, to everything in between, until one of them passes away. That first song I wrote for this project, “Never Love Another”, then became the idea for the entire album. I just wanted to keep writing about these people and stay in this world.”
WATCH AND SHARE “NEVER LOVE ANOTHER” HERE
BUY / STREAM “NEVER LOVE ANOTHER” HERE
“Never Love Another” Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
The 29-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. “The whole summersets project came from a place of desperation and inspiration. After my last solo album, I felt so beaten down by the music industry, but once Andrew and I began writing and singing these songs together I was so energized by the process, making music was fun again.”
Produced by frequent collaborator Jim Bryson (Kathleen Edwards, The Weakerthans) throughout 2019, the trio quickly conceptualized and recorded the sound for the new project, each song taking no longer than a couple of days to finish. "We were trying not to overthink anything; just trying to chase a warm, lush production, and taking a page or two from the late-60s early-70s singer-songwriters we really love” says Sowka. The end result is a sunny and often upbeat record that is highlighted by Sowka’s melodic harmonies blending seamlessly with Mattson’s voice.
All the songs on Small Town Saturday play out like a series of vignettes, each one exploring a different moment in the two characters small-town world and relationship. We hear the first flickers of desire and a foreshadowing of what is to come in “Fake Flowers”, which then progresses into the lovers fleeing their small town fate, even if just in dreams, in “Anywhere You Go” - ‘If we never come back home, I’ll follow you anywhere you go’.
WATCH AND SHARE “ANYWHERE YOU GO” HERE
BUY / STREAM “ANYWHERE YOU GO” HERE
The story of the album is highlighted by the centrepiece “Never Love Another”, which outlines the relationship from its first phases, through marriage, life struggles, forming a family, finally up to the last moments of one half of the partnership’s life. The album concludes with one character writing to the other on the wistful “Still” - ‘If tomorrow never comes, and our dreams are left untrue, if the whole world falls apart, there will still be me and you’.
This project is both the musical start for Sowka and Mattson and also the start of a multi-part story to be told over the course of a larger collection of songs. As the two sing on “More Less” : ‘Some nights when I remember the two of us way back when, cigarettes and soft Septembers, the more beginning the less we end’.
