When Summer Comes

After indie pop group Math and Physics Club released their fourth album, Lived Here Before, in 2018, major events including the death of a member and a long pause in touring (or gathering to record) due to the COVID-19 pandemic found singer/rhythm guitarist Charles Bert sheltering at home with time on his hands. Taking inspiration from the D.I.Y. ethos of labels like Sarah Records and especially fellow Olympia, Washington townies K Records, he began to write, arrange, perform, and record songs all on his own, adopting the solo alias Field School. A friend started a cassette label (Small Craft Advisory) just to release the earliest results in the form of January 2022s Its Only Everything EP, Aprils Hey Satellite EP, and Augusts Swainsons Thrush EP. Some of those songs reappear on the projects November full-length debut, When Summer Comes, a set of warm, earnest, jangle-suffused home recordings that address both loss and positivity, with mood swings reflected in titles such as "Loving Me Was Never Gonna Work Out," "If You See Me Around Just Act Like You Didnt," "Im Starting to Feel a Bit Like Myself Again," and "I Just Want to Paint You in Pictures." The bittersweetly infectious "Loving Me Was Never Gonna Work Out" opens the album with a blend of sweet and crunchy guitar tones, plenty of echo, and lyrics like "Honeymoons in June/September and falling leaves/Cold Decembers/Daffodils every spring/But loving you was never gonna work out...." Its followed by the bouncy, uptempo "Jennifer Valentine," whose unrequited feelings and Morrissey-like melodic howls do nothing to lift the melancholy mood. That happens less than six minutes into the record on the affectionate "I Just Want to Paint You in Pictures," as none of the 12 songs reach the four-minute mark. Bert goes on to navigate sparer arrangements with rotating, perhaps symbolically, missing parts on tracks including the ballad "Wide Awake," a wistful title track that gets feet tapping without bass or bass drum, and "Is This Our Love Song?," which makes do with just bass drum and tambourine for its kit. The consistently moving and melodic When Summer Comes closes on the relatively noisier, grieving "You Will Be Light," whose sinuous melodic guitar lines negotiate a carpet of fuzz behind Berts gentle, reassuring vocals, achieving classic classic-indie-pop form. ~ Marcy Donelson