Grooving with Glyn
Let’s get something out of the way—July Talk isn’t background music. You don’t put them on while folding laundry or roasting vegetables. You feel them. You react to them. Their songs don’t ask for your attention—they demand it. And usually, they earn it.
The band hails from Toronto, and they’ve been putting their boot print on alt-rock since 2012. What sets them apart is the push-pull electricity between the two leads—Peter Dreimanis, whose voice sounds like whiskey-soaked sandpaper, and Leah Fay Goldstein, who brings clarity, chaos, and sharp edges wrapped in glitter. Their sound is part garage rock, part theatrical fever dream, and part beautiful mess. If Tom Waits and Karen O were trapped in a dive bar during a blackout, you’d get close to July Talk.
And then comes “Summer Dress.”
Now, you’d expect a track with that title to be breezy, soft, maybe a little sentimental. This isn’t that kind of summer. This is the kind of summer where the heat is oppressive and nothing feels settled. “Summer Dress” is moody and restless, like someone pacing a bedroom, trying not to pick up the phone. It’s drenched in sexual tension, confusion, and vulnerability… and it simmers.
Peter growls his way through verses that feel more like confessions than lyrics. The guitar line jitters beneath him—angular, anxious, almost twitchy. Leah’s voice doesn’t float above his like some background harmony. It intervenes. She’s not just singing with him—she’s answering, challenging, accusing, seducing. The result? You don’t know if the two of them are about to kiss or kill each other.
“That summer dress, it’s not the same without the heat…”
That line alone carries weight. It isn’t just about clothes—it’s about context. Emotion. Memory. Sometimes things only make sense under pressure. Without the fire, the longing, the ache—they lose their shape. That’s what this song is about: the aftertaste of something intense, beautiful, maybe toxic… and not quite gone.
Musically, it rides that sweet spot between control and chaos. The percussion stays locked in, but there’s a ragged edge to everything else. It’s as if the whole thing is barely holding itself together—and that’s exactly the point.
What I love most about this track, though, is how it refuses to resolve. It never gives you the big explosion or the neat ending. It leaves you in the haze, in that slow burn of memory where things still sting, but not enough to scar. July Talk doesn’t want you to feel comfortable—they want you to feel real. And with “Summer Dress,” they nail it.
If you’re new to the band, don’t stop here. Dip into:
- “Push + Pull” – a club-banger for people who’d rather fight than dance.
- “Picturing Love” – wild and theatrical, but still achingly human.
- “Beck + Call” – where tension becomes performance art.
- “Certain Father” – a brooding gem buried in their latest album.
But for now? Let “Summer Dress” wrap around you like smoke from a memory you shouldn’t revisit—but do anyway.
This was written for Glyn Wilton’s Mixed Music Bag