Synth Single Review: “That Summer Love” by Sun City

by Karl Magi

Sun City’s “That Summer Love” resounds with a free-feeling guitar and a steady rhythmic pulse before Chris Catton’s voice exudes the sensations of a ‘80s love ballad, echoing with burning emotion as guitar strings intertwine. As the chorus flies with excited abandon, the underpinnings throb and Chris Catton’s guitar solo paints a feeling of impassioned nostalgia and a longing for lost love as the enthusiastic vocals fill me with joy.

Vibrant notes cascade from the guitar, bending and leaping with unrestrained dynamism. Chris Catton catches the aching for a return to a relationship that was lost, exploding with all of the affection still within him. Jonas Klintström Larsen's sax tears into the music with pure, blinding radiance and a feeling of unstoppable fervency and undeniable need before Chris Catton carries the song to an end along with the boisterous guitar.

Describing himself as a loner, the storyteller says the song's subject was just like a hurricane. He's "been dreaming for so long that I'd be swept up and taken away" as he adds that it feels like yesterday "hiding out in the open." He never told her about how badly his heart could be broken.

"I was walking on a thin line, trying to keep my feet off the ground" although this song’s subject wouldn't stay around. The narrator didn't think she'd quit on him as he asks "what happened to that summer love?" He keeps dreaming of her and still believes in their summer love. He recalls how everything started and they were "stuck in a moment, pretending it was forever and it would never be over."

With passion, our storyteller says that the song's subject "carved her name in my very soul,” as he describes her like an angel "calling me back home to a place inside her mind. " Catching him up in a feeling, he found his feet off the ground again. However, the chasm between them was growing even though they "couldn't bear to go it alone."

"All the cracks were showing like a point of no return" and the narrator laments the fact that the sun was setting "on the promise we had set in stone." The truth cried out to them, telling them that they were never going home. He wanted her to "hold me till the end, tell me I'm the one” and return him to the summer love they had.

To conclude, our storyteller says, "sail me to shore, pull me up above, I'm living for my summer love."