song premieres: "Summer Sick" & "Swarm" - Drag Daze

photo: Andrew Wells

On their new singles, Drag Daze presents two very different sides to this recently established project. The first single, “Summer Sick,” is a hopeful and excitable track charged by guitars and walls of fuzz that call for an end to summer. It’s a lamenting of the season that won’t ever leave, an obvious annoyance at having to fake smiles and continue to shell out cash blatant in the song’s furious guitars. On “Swam,” the mood is initially tepid, beginning with the ringing noise of beachy guitars. But then, its intensity and mood become enlivened, with instrumentals diving in and out, their strength made a song that calls for new beginnings. And even with the addition of a serious moment of lyrical bops and one final guitar sendoff, the song gleams with an obvious mood of melancholy made fun.

On Drag Daze: “Drag Daze is my solo project following the breakup of my last band The Scuzzballs. I’ve recruited Jimmy Wilkens (formerly of The Scuzzballs, currently in The Sonder Bombs) and Michael Torok for live shows and recording.”

On Summer Sick: “Summer Sick is half about me genuinely being sick of the summer and not being able to relate to the joy and festivities it brings to most people, and half being a tongue-in-cheek, woe-is-me form of complaint to not fitting in the social norm.”