Perhaps it's the band's spontaneity that accounts for the biggest difference between Summer Sun and 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out -- two albums McNew himself acknowledges aren't that different. Where Nothing was an album of sublimated tension, Summer Sun sounds organic and unfussy -- even in its flashes of darkness. Yet, aside from noting that Summer Sun is more "rhythmic" and "textured" than Nothing, McNew keeps coming back to the theme that "very little has changed."
"Maybe the next one always seems like a natural extension of the last one," he suggests. "But seriously -- same producer as ever, same studio; we even stayed in the same places we'd stayed before. It's just that, over time, more and more people have found out about us. I mean, now that we're playing the bigger venues in the towns we've been hitting for years, even the lunkheads in the audience are gratifying. Sometimes you wish they wouldn't talk during the quiet parts," he concludes with a laugh, "but we're still glad they're out there." Likewise.
