Boombox Blitz: Bob Sumner treasures the past in ‘Riverbed’
The Americana musician keeps things simple and bittersweet in his debut solo video.
Welcome to Boombox Blitz, an artist spotlight series showcasing overlooked singers, songwriters and musicians who are quietly taking over the world.
The burning click of the keys is a sound you come to cherish. The typewriter, now a vintage relic, whose earliest incarnation can be traced back to the 1500s, representing a way of life so far removed from our own, continues to remain an important pillar of truth in human connectivity. Through watery sepia tones and contemplative, well-plotted camera angles, Americana musician Bob Sumner (one half of The Sumner Brothers) frames his meditation on love’s bittersweet taste with “Riverbed,” a sobering, yet dreamy, solo debut single. “Sometimes your riverbed runs dry,” he sings, his voice smoked and tart as it glides on airy percussion and acoustic guitar.
In sitting down at his desk, fashioning out the song’s lyrics on a fixer-upper typewriter, which is seen polished and readjusted, Sumner unpacks the darkest and dustiest confessions of his heart. The visual, exhibiting the singer-songwriter at his most vulnerable, was filmed and edited by Colebrook Productions and witnesses him almost beholden to his emotions and the ripened allure of the past. “Oh the tips of our tongues, dear / I could of swore that was love, how sweet of taste / Or was I dreaming.”
His voice carries you above the clouds, riding the fluffy edges of silver-linings and casting a snapshot of their life together. The ground swells and speeds past and soon only translucent ghosts are left behind. “Well, I dreamt it was the wings of a thousand golden doves / Stripped me of my feet, laid me at the doorstep of your heart.” The glistening but damaged levers flutter from the rapid fire of his fingertips, stamping shapes of letters onto crisp, yellowed blank paper. The simplicity of such a visual is stunning and potent and gives richer depth to Sumner’s lonesome cry.
“Riverbed” serves as the primer for Sumner’s forthcoming new solo record, Wasted Love Songs, out January 25, 2019. “I had all these ballads and folk songs that worked really well together. I wanted to make an album I could just put on and unfold into,” he says of the collection, produced by Erik Nielsen and recorded at Vancouver’s Afterlife Studio (which has housed sessions for the likes of Diana Ross and Led Zeppelin. “We’ve always done recording in cabins and whatnot, bringing in an engineer and some kegs of beer. But for [this record], I wanted to go into a proper studio and work out these songs I’d been sitting on for these years.”
Watch below:
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