Words by Jason Lee
You may’ve noticed we’ve been putting out nominees for Song of the Summer lately which in our mind should be awarded towards the *end* of summer when all the data is in and votes can be carefully counted and whereas we’re already covered songs about business casual beachwear and hot-single-girl summers in our previous selections today we wanna offer up something a bit less intuitive but still fitting to the season that’s like the musical undertow to such familiar summer tropes…
…cuz what’s more fitting than a song capturing the vivid sense of presence and visceral immediacy of a wet-hot muggy summer day counteracted by the womblike sense of solitude you can’t help but feel when the air feels like a murky urban bouillabaisse so you head to the nearest beach or rooftop or happy hour or cooling center and while there’s always value to be found in mindfulness and reaching out to others you know that in reality you’re just going thru the motions and there’s nothing you want more than to get the f— out of your head and break the shackles of rationality and responsibility and what better way of doing this in one fell swoop than by simply passing out…
…with days and nights [editor’s note: the weather was quite lovely today] easily going from feeling light and carefree one moment to something heavier and more oppressive the next and who better than a band called Bummer Camp to capture this unstable dynamic, a dynamic informing many a classic summer camp flick from Sleepaway Camp to Meatballs where food fights and panty raids are the norm and whose young “bummer in the summer” protagonists start off cripplingly shy and withdrawn but bloom anew in the hothouse setting of the summer getaway camp whether via chants of “it just doesn’t matter” or murdering one’s fellow campers using such creative methods as trapping some poor sap an in outhouse with a hive’s worth of bees or death by curling iron in a manner that’s especially grisly…
..all of which makes total sense cuz summer in general is all about escaping from reality innit with the season having long been linked with states of liminality and disequilibrium or getting as far away from normal, daily routine at least whether via a vacation from school or work or taking a day trip to Coney or the Rockaways or having a romantic summer fling or losing yourself in a good beach read or summer popcorn movie or attending summer camp etc. etc. cuz we’re all looking for a little ecstasy and a little oblivio assuming these are even two different things whether just to clear one’s head or in search of more meaningful, lasting transition so no wonder most of these summer movies aspire to the pure jouissance of fleshy sex farces or blood-splattered slashers and if truly ambitious the transient magic of the “coming of age” film whose subjects are perched uneasily between childhood and adulthood…
I wanna run to death
I wanna feel in this moment
I don’t want nothing else
I wanna come to surface
–Bummer Camp, “this moment”
…which is exactly why Bummer Camp should be getting more soundtrack placements in summer-based indie films seeing as their music perfectly embodies the summertime dynamic described above with songs that may sound breezy and easy-going on the surface but with a disquiet and longing underneath (even a touch of fury) finding its way to the surface in the music’s heavier, more oppressive moments starting with early singles like “this moment” (2021) which sounds like it’s maybe from the POV of the kid from Meatballs with musical backing that could pass as a Joy Division demo were it not for a few too many major chords while “laugh all day” (2022) is an outright sunny-sounding indie banger about existential detachment (“Wut i want? Nothin nothin“) and the blissful potential of oblivion (“sometimes it makes me wanna laugh all day“) and here it should be noted that all lyrical interpretations are purely speculative on our part…
…songs which previous to the band’s semi-recent expansion to a five-piece were performed entirely solo in live settings by the project’s mastermind Eli Frank (also of Teenage Halloween and PUNT) with assistance from a loop pedal, beat box, and an array of guitar pedals which he always uses to kick up an impressive cloud of white noise all while maintaining Bummer Camp’s underlying hooky melodicism and rocking out just as hard and aggressively as if there was a full band behind him to the point where it sometimes appears Eli is trying to crawl out of his own skin and dissolve into a pure state of sonic anti-matter bliss as all good musicians are wont to do…
…and now with their latest single “Pass Out” Bummer Camp has set its controls for the heart of the summer sun (tho’ the recorded version is still performed, produced, and mixed entirely by Eli) opening with a smudged pitch-bent riff that makes it clear from the start that “Pass Out” will lean heavily towards the “gaze” side of the band’s self-described “grunge-gaze” sound more than ever before which together with the woozy, punchdrunk vocals and wall-of-sound production is like the sound you’d expect to hear in your head after starring directly into the sun for an inadvisable length of time more than a little dizzy as a result but too blissed out to care brain flooded with endorphins as the music swoons and swells like the sound of the pounding surf and ocean swells…
…and in keeping with the theme of oblivion we’re admittedly oblivious to the song’s lyrics cuz we can barely make out a word but hey we figure it’s apropos to its inchoate energy and decided not to even inquire and while I’m guessing Eli doesn’t actually sing “don’t tell the pharoah / fill up on queso” at the 33 second mark we were out at Asbury Park this weekend for a rare mini-vacay and played “Pass Out” thru our bluetooth speaker on the airbnb’s front porch and no sh*t just at that moment a friend offered up some chips and queso which made us think the song must’ve opened up a portal to another dimension where we got inhabited by the spirits of JWoww and The Situation cuz it sounds a random phrase overheard or misheard at a costume party featured on Jersey Shore but we didn’t say anything cuz it woulda made us sound out of our minds…
…but maybe we should’ve cuz we went to Asbury after all to get out of our minds in the waning days of summer and succeeded in large part thanks to the bands featured at the surf music fest over the weekend not to mention the multiple beachside/poolside hangs and the live resin gummies and btw if you really think about it shoegaze and surf music share more than a few qualities in common like an obsession with guitar tone and oceanic sonic textures in general plus alternative tunings and the contrast of clean-strummed rhythm guitar with heavily-processed lead and a steadily churning rhythm section holding the whole think in check with hypnotic head-nodding beats and mild syncopations…
…all of which designed to overwhelm the senses like a surfer riding a glassy A-frame straight into oblivion in an “endless summer of the mind” seeking that brief moment of quietude at the wave’s center before returning to the ceaseless roar of the ocean and the next attempt taken to conquer it which as it turns out is a pretty good description of the motivating animus behind “Pass Out” with Eli describing the song as being about “going through the motions [and] feeling as if life has become a never-ending hardship [where] we all know, or ignore, the fact that sooner or later it does end, and those quiet moments can be the most enjoyable“…
…and if that sounds a bit morbid well like we said “musical undertow” with Eli going on to note that “‘Pass Out’ arrives with a video from regular Bummer Camp collaborator [multimedia artist/animator/illustrator/experimental video maker/musician] Preston Spurlock [whose] mixed-media collages serve up a psyche noir wig-out that encapsulates the restless nature at the heart of Bummer Camp” and indeed the video captures the sun-dazed hallucinatory quality of the song thru means of hand-drawn snakes and skulls and paramecium (?) overlaid with digital glitchiness and live-action shots of possibly undead figures rising from what may be a mausoleum plus POV shots aimed directly overhead with the sun’s intense glare filtered through a canopy of black-and-white trees which serves as a useful reminder that if you’re gonna pass out belly up on the beach to only one song this summer (or what remains of it) we recommend it be this one for obvious reasons…
