The Second Summer, hailing from Chicago, characterizes their musical style as Hard Power Pop. Their latest release, Undertow, hit the airwaves a few weeks back and is packed with fantastic tracks. Steve Gatland shares with Sweet Sweet Music blog the story behind the album’s creation.

You can discover ‘Something’ featured on the Best Power Pop of 2024 Spotify Playlist.

Success can take on different meanings as time goes on. When envisioning success for this new record, what does that picture look like now?

Maybe it’s because where we all are in our lives, but what we really care about is having our music resonate with people in an authentic way. That is success for us. We don’t write cute or super light-hearted material (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but try to write about the feelings, emotions, stories, observations that we experience as we live our lives. We hope listeners can relate to some of what we’re writing about …

The song Invisible has a lot of angles to it, but one is the feeling of being left out, not fitting in, being unseen. The song centers on a relationship that has turned, but the song also ties to a theme we write a lot about, which is growing older. As we get older, we slowly become invisible. When we are young, our light shines brightly and that makes us very visible to the world (sometimes for the better, sometimes for worse, but definitely visible) … as we get older, our light becomes duller and duller, until we are on longer seen.

The song Undefeated is about a person(s) that we likely all know … the person that can’t ever say they’re sorry. The ability to say sorry, apologize, admit you’re wrong, is the single best thing we can do when we screw up. But there are many people, including some of the most powerful people in the world, that simply cannot say “I’m sorry.” And because of this character flaw (because that’s what we think it is), people waste time, money, energy, and emotions running around in circles trying to explain away (often by lying) their actions. And, most importantly, this can and does end up hurting a lot of people … emotionally, physically, financially. All because someone did not have the character to say “I messed this up … I’m sorry … please accept my apology.”

We hope that people can relate to songs like these.

As an artist, the act of baring your emotions to the world is profound. Does this vulnerability come naturally to you, or is it a constant journey of finding comfort?

We are very comfortable expressing our feelings and emotions via our music. Most of our songs are written from the perspective of the triumphs and tragedies (and everything in between) that we all experience as we go through life. We have been around the block – families, jobs, relationships started, relationships ended – and those experiences are a really big part of our material. We don’t write about these things in a sullen or melancholy way, but in what I’d call a sober way.

The other big cloud that we all live under is the cloud of getting older. In a lot of ways, our music, our band name, our outlook stems from this belief that although we’ve done a lot of living and learning the hard way, there is always a chance for a second summer. Whatever that might be for you, we believe that even when youth (summer) has passed you by, there are still many summers left – you just need to chase them.

Can you recall the last instance when you felt the immediate certainty of having penned a hit song?

Just to be clear, we have never written a hit song … maybe someday we will. We’re lucky, I think, in that we’re not really trying to write hit songs per se. As I said earlier, we want to write songs that resonate with folks.

That said, we have some songs that consistently get better reviews, feedback, and attention than others. The song “Something” has been a top attention getter for us with a lot of radio play, and feedback from other artists. Of course, it was also the last song we recorded, and we almost didn’t put it on the release. The old saying that sometimes the best songs come the quickest and most naturally has been true for us. And Something is a good example of that. We knew that it was a really good song in rough form, and felt even more confident that it was when it came out of mixing. But, we can’t say that we ever had certainty it was going to be well received. But we had a feeling!

Among the compliments you’ve received, is there one that remains etched in your memory? If so, what made it particularly unforgettable?

First and foremost, every time someone says they like our songs, we are humbled and grateful. It doesn’t matter if it’s the first time, or the 1,000th time, we are always so thankful. The one memory that jumps out playing our first show in Chicago. We were booked by Emily at Bang-A-Gong to play in late December at Montrose Saloon.

After our set, someone (Corey!) come up to us and said that she loved our sound, that her brother had a radio show, and that she had sent him a video of our performance and suggested he play us … and the next week we were on The Power Pop Shoppe radio program. That memory will always stick with us. It’s been great getting feedback from some great Chicago and Illinois bands like Van Go, Thrift Store Halo, Dreamjacket and Half Catholic.

And it’s been fun hearing feedback from critics and radio folks. We’ve been compared to Teenage Fanclub, The Posies, Buffalo Tom, The Connells, and more. Just being in the same sentence with these bands is crazy! And while we like all those bands, I would not say they were the bands we listened to the most growing up and into adulthood. Many of us were into grungy-90’s rock, punk, prog-rock and even metal, although bands like Material Issue, Nada Surf, and Descendents were definitely in the mix.

Looking ahead to the next couple of months, what exciting plans or projects are on the horizon for you?

We have a busy schedule with gigs through the summer. We’re really excited to be playing the International Pop Overthrow Festival in Chicago, likely on April 27th (the festival runs from April 19-17 at Montrose Saloon in Chicago). This festival has so many great power pop, indie rock bands and more, and we are really looking forward to it.

We’ve been connecting with some really awesome Chicago-area bands, and are working to put together some shows with them. Stay tuned by following our social media pages on Facebook and Instagram.

We have a ton of new songs that are ready, and we’ve been weaving (and will be weaving them) in our sets.

And, we are hoping to release more singles and then a second LP/EP in later 2024 or early 2025.

Studio moments often hold a touch of magic. Could you recount an instance that stands out as the most enchanting during your creative process?

Our songs were tracked in a home studio. The performances were really good, but the recording quality was not superb (we have good amps, guitars, basses … but not good mics, and we definitely were not super knowledgeable about micing techniques). We were really worried that we would have to go back and re-track all of them in a studio … which would take a lot of time and money.

A Chicago studio, Gravity, mixed our songs and we were blown away by how they came to life sonically and dynamically. There is no doubt the tracking would have been better if we had done it at Gravity, but at the same time Gravity was able to squeeze every last ounce of tone and feel out of these tracks, and we were blown away by how awesome they sounded.

We worked together on the mixes, but Gravity really helped us get them to a great place. When we first heard the mixes we were floored by how big and beautiful they sounded. The song “Never Not Forever” really exemplifies this … the tracks were well played and the performances were great, but it was somewhat thin sonically. When it come-out of mixing it had been transformed into a song that was at times spartan, and at times thunderous. There is no way we could have even come close to that without working with a studio.

How would you describe the evolution of your sound in this new album compared to your previous works? Were there intentional shifts in style or themes?

We have always been rooted in what I would call hard power pop, but our earlier stuff leaned a little more in the direction of pop-punk. We’ve brought more harmonies to our new material, added more texture and played some slower tempo tunes, and our lyrics have changed to be more reflective of the lessons we’ve all learned the hard way. None of this was intentional. It was really just where the songwriting went and we didn’t resist it.