The last few years have found SUMMER SALT straddling the line between past and present tense. In 2024, the Austin, TX-formed breeze-pop group celebrated the 10-year anniversary of their debut EP, Driving To Hawaii, with a special remaster and nationwide tour – alongside a brand-new release, Electrolytes, that further solidified them as one of the most consistently blissful, eclectic forces in the indie world.
Now, on their fourth LP, RESIDE, the group (founded by childhood friends vocalist/guitarist Matthew Terry and drummer/multi-instrumentalist Eugene Chung in 2012 and rounded out by Winston Triolo and Anthony Barnett) continue the push and pull between where they’ve been and where they’re going, honoring the sun-soaked charm that won them their devoted fanbase while exploring new creative terrain.
“We always want to make sure we're bridging the gap between celebrating what we’ve done and veering into the places that interest us now,” Chung says. “It feels like there’s always more to explore with our music.”
While the 13-track Reside carries the same effortlessly beautiful melodies, delicate introspection and hazy instrumentation that have colored the band’s catalog – like 2021’s Sequoia Moon and 2023’s Campanita – the process of constructing the songs was quite literally flipped on its head this time around, with Chung handling the bulk of the songwriting duties, later leaning on his bandmates to bring his initial ideas to life.
“It was exciting to interpret Eugene’s personal experiences and try to put ourselves inside his head and see where he was coming from,” Terry explains. “Writing with Winston and Anthony has been awesome, and we all really wanted to make sure we were honoring Eugene’s songs and doing everything we could to add our own elements to them.”
Self-produced by the band alongside longtime collaborator Chris Beeble (Gregory Alan Isakov, Rise Against), Reside carries Summer Salt’s hallmark aesthetic, a swirl of surf pop, bossa nova and retro indie that evokes long coastal drives and the slow exposure of Polaroid photos on scorching summer afternoons while offering new emotional textures and lyrical depth: The album-opening “Better” is a quietly defiant anthem of self-belief in the face of abandonment, turning pain into a declaration of independence – a sentiment balanced by the whole-hearted, string-backed adulation of “Tell Me.”
