Brandon Williams — the mastermind of Chastity, based in Whitby, Ont. — walks a thin line of indie coolness and open-hearted emo. He cites influences like Unwound, Hum, Smashing Pumpkins or Jimmy Eat World in the same breath, breaking down the boundaries of rock and channelling intricate songcraft. His new release is an experimental mindset into massive, hooky anthems of self-doubt, isolation and cathartic bloodletting.
Suffer Summer is an album largely about happiness, but one that looks from the outside of happiness, wondering why it’s just out of reach. The album begins with the aggressive but soaring “Real World,” with pummeling guitars and openly emo lyrics — “running face-first into hell on earth” — bleated out over a deceptively complex song structure. It’s very smart songcraft, equally elusive and cathartic, building through its winding structure toward the anthemic chorus, with Williams yelling “I can’t cope” like a scream into the void, fighting for his life.
The next song, “Pummeling,” distills this formula into a tight, two-minute pop punk song with a beautifully constructed hook, as cascading countermelodies fall around the defeated vocal like punches beating him down.
“When You Go Home I Withdrawal” channels a bit of Deftones with its beefed-up, melancholic shoegazing, falling into the despairing, desperate centrepiece “The Barbed Wire Fence Around Happiness.” The song is a mini opus, running through its sections in rapid succession and distilling the album’s themes of searching for hope against hope.
The album’s second half brings a softer side of the project to the forefront. “Somersault” introduces some melodramatic strings, accentuating the yearning sweetness of its melody, while “Happy Face” is an unbelievably catchy song about a friend’s fentanyl overdose and the struggle of coping with grief while trying to put on a happy façade.
Chastity’s labelmate City and Colour shows up on the penultimate song, and they stick close to Dallas Green’s trademark whining acoustic emo. It’s the album’s only true misstep — it feels wrong to accommodate so much to an outside voice on an album that is otherwise so singular and unique in its disregard for genre.
Suffer Summer delivers on the promise of Chastity’s earlier records. The songcraft is as sturdy as it gets, the production is muscular but detailed and the lyrics are thematically solid and occasionally ear-catching in their specificity. It’s a bravely emo album that disregards any attempt at coolness, shooting instead for catharsis and power.
