Geoffrey O'Connor
Summer Flake
Hello Friends
Rice Is Nice Records
Australia’s Stephanie Craise, who records as Summer Flake, makes electric folk music that’s both mammoth and intimate. Her sweet-and-sour combination of frayed guitars and dreamy, overdubbed voices has a bracing sizzle, with sentimental melodies tugging at the heartstrings to amplify the drama. If Hello Friends feels like eavesdropping on someone’s aching reveries, it never achieves the creepy oversharing quality sometimes heard in confessional pop, thanks to Craise’s vibrant sense of songcraft. Check out “So Long” and “Make Your Way Back to Me,” both five-minute-plus epics that benefit from their extended running time by allowing her to slowly cast a powerful spell. Following last year’s tantalizing, albeit tentative, Time Rolls By EP, this arresting album marks an exciting leap forward. Bravo!
