Across the ten tracks on Summer of Love, Jess Ribeiro traverses isolation, loss, tiny snatches of love, expectation versus reality, once-in-a-century pandemics and healing. It was written and recorded during a particularly unstable time, with Ribeiro living in nine different houses across a two year period, including six months in a church outside of the city - “that instability affected my mental health,” she says. It also created the spark for her fourth album, on which Ribeiro transfixes audiences as she digs deep into the present, past, and wanted future.
The first demos for Summer of Love were sketched out at a solar-powered shack by Ribeiro with her friend and musical collaborator Dave Mudie (Courtney Barnett, Super American Eagle), an experience that wasn’t without excitement: “We used all the solar power trying to record demos. It ended with us around a fire without electricity for the night, terrified that the feral boars were going to get us.” From there, she recorded the album with Nick Huggins on Wadawurrung Country in Point Lonsdale with special guests Jim White (Dirty Three, Xylouris White) on drums, Darcy McNulty on saxophone, folk-diviner Leah Senior on keys, James Seymour on bass, Davie Mudie taking percussion duties, Carrie Webster on violin and viola, and Huggins himself chipping in on bass, tape and drum loops, synth, guitars and piano. The way in which the album came together with her collaborators - separately, but towards the same north star - is where the beauty in the work is experienced. “It was improvised and experimental, musicians could only come visit one at a time due to the restrictions, half of the musicians never even came to the studio.”