Holly Rankin, aka Australian singer-songwriter Jack River, had a specific sound in mind when approaching her second album. “Modern Beach Boys pop. That’s what I wanted to do on this record,” she tells Apple Music. Written against a backdrop of pandemic lockdowns and global political and social upheaval, Endless Summer draws more than just musical parallels with ’60s-era Beach Boys. “There’s something really interesting about referencing that time, because politically and socially it was a little bit similar [to today] in terms of the really big things going on,” she says. “But the most interesting artists of the day that I love were making quite fantastical music and doing it consciously, and using another space to talk about politics and social change. So that was also within that reference.” Recorded primarily with co-producer Matt Corby (although Rankin also had sessions with producers such as Xavier Dunn, Konstantin Kersting and Joel Quartermain), initially the record was shaping up to be a protest album before the urge to find escape in her music took over. Here, Rankin talks us through the fantastical world of Endless Summer, track by track. “Real Life” “It’s an instant jet into the dream of Endless Summer, immediately transporting you into a pretty fantastical world. The song was made in the depths of the pandemic. Xavier [Dunn] was just playing around with beats and melodies, and I heard the chorus of ‘Real Life’ in my head. It was so fun and so far away from where we were all at mentally at the time. I was discovering Primal Scream and that kind of music and thinking about playing a festival again, and how I wanted to just have the best time.” “Lie in the Sun” “I asked my publisher, ‘What did you call going out and getting wasted when you were young?’ And she said, ‘We called it lying in the sun.’ They’d say, ‘Let’s go lie in the sun.’ I just loved that image, then built a song to that mind-flip of lying in the sun at night, because it’s not possible. I’m always inspired by MGMT and Tame Impala, and grew up with Empire of the Sun and PNAU, and wanted to try my hand at making something like that.” “Endless Summer” (feat. Genesis Owusu) “I’ve known Matt [Mason, DMA’S guitarist] for a very long time, and decided a couple of years ago to do some writing with Matt and [DMA’S guitarist] Johnny Took. Matt said, ‘I’ve got this melody that I’ve had for 10 years or so, but it hasn’t found a home.’ It wasn’t a melody, it was like a chord progression. He played it to me and it was the beautiful chord progression that is now ‘Endless Summer’. I took it into the studio with Matt Corby, and [we thought] it’d be incredible to have a male vocal on it [so] reached out to Kofi [Genesis Owusu] and he jumped on board.” “Lucy Sea Queen” “I wrote this song with one of my best friends. We wrote it as a joke birthday song to another friend called Lucy. We couldn’t go to her birthday party, so we wrote her a song imagining what she would be doing on the night of her birthday. That was many years ago, and I’ve always loved it. I ended up finishing it lyrically. It’s like a dedication to a best friend. It’s one of my favourite songs.” “Honey” “I wrote this song on the first day I met Matt [Corby], with Jarryd James as well. I brought a jar of honey to Matt’s house like a peace offering—that’s where the lyrics started—and it moulded into what it is today. The song for me is a bit of a personal journey around the lines between detachment and attachment in a relationship and a kind of sarcastic commentary on how woke Silicon Valley bros have taken meditation and mindfulness and made it into something that’s sometimes a little bit selfish. The line ‘You think you’re so free/You can forget about me’ [is about] when detachment becomes dangerous in a relationship.” “Lie to You” “This is probably the most real song on the record emotionally. It’s about the moment in a relationship where you can either tell the truth or start lying to yourself or the other person, like the breaking point. I was just wanting to express the heartbreak around the moment when you start lying to your partner.” “Nothing Has Changed” “It was written the day after I played my first show back [after COVID lockdowns]. I was driving out to a waterfall on my own—that wonderful feeling when you’re driving alone. This song came into my head. I had so much fear around returning after two years of being unable to see audiences and be in the same place—you can feel like you’re going to be irrelevant and no one’s going to connect. [But] as soon as I got onto the stage at that show in Darwin, it was like nothing had changed. We were all still in that same magical place together.” “Paradise” “During the pandemic I was living in a small town on the coast and, at one point, was feeling pretty depressed and isolated and like my music career was dead. It was so beautiful to be able to be home and around loved ones and the ocean, living quite an idyllic life, but I was still feeling quite depressed and disconnected. This song is like, ‘All is well in paradise,’ but I just can’t realise it. I think I wrote it for myself to be reminded that, you do have an incredible life and an incredible career. It was like a mantra to just shut up and snap out of it.” “Holy Men” “I started writing this song almost 10 years ago when, as a very young person, I was just understanding how the world works and how men have been in power for quite a long time and my young frustration with that. I always knew I wanted to release the song but just didn’t know when. I think around the [2022 Australian] election, [with] Scott Morrison, Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, these types of people being in power, I really wanted to polish it up and get it out there.” “Stranger’s Dream” “Again, I started writing the song about 10 years ago. I had the chorus in my head. It kind of speaks to the feeling that you’re living a stranger’s dream, like you’re living someone else’s life. That’s a feeling that I continued to have across my twenties. I think, at this point, hitting 30 and starting a family, I especially feel like moving beyond that feeling, stepping into who I really am and who I really want to be.”