The Summer Rabbit have just released their first single since their 2016 self-titled debut album. The Dartmouth-based trio are turning the tables and casting aspersions on Halifax with their murder ballad, “Gottingen Street, 1979.” But then again, maybe it was a suicide…
The band explain that they were looking to produce a song with a harder edged rock and roll song that still contained the melodic catchiness that they’re known for (see “Jimmy’s A Lady Now”), while also writing a song about Halifax.
“Instead of trying to just do a generic retelling of some historical event I decided to make up my own story of a young guy named Robbie who came from a small Nova Scotia town into the big city in the late 70’s. Unfortunately for him his life ends when he’s only 17,” explains The Summer Rabbit’s lyricist and vocalist Blair Lucas.
Intentionally leaving the the story ambiguous, Lucas says he wanted to leave it up to the listener to interpret whether Robbie was murdered or a case of suicide.
“There wasn’t really a moment where I sat down and said, ‘I really want to write a possible murder mystery.’ The words just kinda came to me after I came up with the chords and I thought it’d be cool to have that kind of story play out,” says Lucas.
“I like songs that take you on a journey and I feel in the almost 4 minutes the song you learn who Robbie is and feel sympathy for him hopefully of some kind.”
For the single they brought in friend and occasional player Michael Sheldon to play lead guitar.
“He came in and did the solo you hear on the single in literally one take,” says Lucas. “He just said “I’ll just try something” and put the solo down. He came back into the room and was like ‘Was that alright?’ and we were screaming at him, ‘That’s the solo!'”
While “Gottingen Street, 1979” appears as a strand-alone single for the moment, the band hint that it might be appearing on an EP in the not-too-distant future.
“We’ve been talking about doing an EP. We recorded the single at HouseFire Studio with Isaac Kent of Dali Van Gogh and if we were to do an EP, we’d definitely go back to him. We have enough material as far as I’m concerned for an EP and an album but it comes down to us getting the proper funding for it.”