Nearly a year since Genevieve Beaudoin reissued and expanded her year-old sophomore EP How for Vinyl Me, Please, the Maine-based songwriter is returning with news of her debut album under the Dead Gowns moniker. It’s Summer, I Love You, and I’m Surrounded by Snow is slated for a Valentine’s Day release (a logical tie-in for the record’s themes of wrestling with desire) via Mtn Laurel Recording Co., and it was recorded over the span of four years dating back to 2020 in former churches and old gymnasiums along the coast of Maine.
Lead single “How Can I” makes good on the album title’s promises of poetry and bewilderment in Beaudoin’s lyrics as the song’s acoustic-ballad verses give way to an explosive full-band climax. “I think as a first single, ‘How Can I’ sets this scene for the entire album—it’s dark, romantic, and disorienting,” the songwriter shares of the track, which balances indie-rock’s accessibility with folkier inclinations in the same way Angel Olsen managed circa Burn Your Fire for No Witness. “I wrote this song when I was in love with someone and couldn’t tell them. I swallowed so many of my feelings down––and pushed this person and that desire away. I think that dishonesty led to a rot in our connection that was unrevivable.”
Meanwhile the track’s Super-8 video (co-directed by Beaudoin and Hilary Eyestone) expresses the song’s sonic polarity by depicting the musician calmly singing in the midst of a carnival’s surrounding chaos. “I love how the rain almost ruined this video,” Beaudoin adds, extending the link between music and imagery. “The rain is only in the video for a few seconds, but it could have destroyed our old Super 8 camera and, with it, all the footage we had just captured. It’s this unintended visual for the tension and vulnerability I’m singing about.”
Check out the visual below, and pre-order the record here.
