The Pull Away
Summerhouse makes the years spent in sweaty London pubs and basements count in unexpected ways. On The Pull Away, Conall Hill’s experience in indie bands emerges through his instinct for making instruments belong together, even when the arrangements escape the shape of a band playing in a room. Guitars melt into synths, beats gives them a gentle push, and the music retains an unforced warmth through all its transformations. There is an alchemy here that makes it difficult to identify where one texture ends and another begins. Hill started exploring solo production when the pandemic interrupted gigs, recording guitars on an iPhone in his parents’ basement; some of those recordings have made it onto this debut EP. Their survival feels telling. These songs carry the intimacy of their beginnings into a broader palette, with the sense of someone following an idea until it finds its own form. Gentle breakbeat touches bring a flicker of ’90s nostalgia, a familiar rhythmic softness beneath combinations that feel less easy to place. It is fertile territory, with enough recognisable warmth to draw you in and enough freedom in the arrangements to keep that familiarity from becoming predictable. French vocalist and songwriter blackbird, Angie Robba, gives the record its emotional centre, tracing desire through the doubts and repeated returns of a relationship that cannot quite release its hold. The title catches that tension beautifully: pulling away is an impulse, and following it through is another matter. There is room within the music for affection and unease to occupy the same space, for the memory of a good night to complicate the morning after. Hill’s feel for bringing instruments together suits that emotional tangle, allowing warmth, friction and longing to remain closely intertwined.