Songs Never Heard
A craft podcast that spotlights some of the best songs you've never heard.
Songs Never Heard
S2E3: Move Back Home (summersets)
A vintage sound meets a modern crisis when the only way forward is backward.
Move Back Home on YouTube: https://youtu.be/S96a17ngwzE
More summersets music:
Robert Howell:
My name is Robert Howell, and in this series I share, and dig into , some of my favorite songs that I've come across while in and exploring the underground songwriting scene. Songs written by talented people who are creating music that deserves wider recognition. Songs that, unfortunately, most of the world may never hear.
Welcome to "Songs Never Heard."
We often think of progress as a straight line. You grow up, you move out, you buy a house, you move forward. But for an entire generation, that line has become a circle.
This episode's song captures that specific modern vertigo. The realization that sometimes the only way to move forward is to actually go backward.
Let's hear "Move Back Home" by summersets.
summersets:
One of these days we're gonna move back home
Settle somewhere we can almost own
Seems so easy now to understand
They're not making any more new land
Sometimes life is like a roundabout
End up back where you started out
Buy a truck and combine our loans
One of these days we’re gonna move back home
One of these nights I’m gonna get some sleep
Love ain’t written like it’s on TV
You remember to forget the past
Smoking weed and then skipping class
Now everyone is either pissed or bored
In therapy that they can’t afford
But it won’t happen to you or me
One of these nights I’m gonna get some sleep
Come on little honey don’t you break my heart
Take another chance I swear I’ll play my part
Keep telling me tomorrow is a twist of fate
We can worry about the weather ‘till the wedding day
One of these weeks I’m gonna pay my bills
Kick the habit honey smoking kills
I will try but could you cut some slack
Turn around until you turn right back
I’m a chip off my old man’s block
You’re no stranger to the cheapest talk
Don’t believe me but I swear I will
One of these weeks I’m gonna pay my bills
Come on little honey don’t you break my heart
Take another chance I swear I’ll play my part
Keep telling me tomorrow is a twist of fate
We can worry about the weather ‘till the wedding day
One of these days you’re gonna finally see
You and I were always meant to be
Dead end dreams didn’t get too far
But wherever I go honey there you are
Sometimes love is like a roundabout
Falling in and then falling out
Rather this than end up alone
One of these days we're gonna move back home
Robert Howell:
If you weren't paying close attention to the lyrics, you might mistake this for a lost track from the late fifties or early sixties. It has that warm, close harmony sound reminiscent of Simon and Garfunkel or the Everly Brothers. But that sonic nostalgia creates a fascinating tension because the subject matter is jarringly modern.
It's tackling Canada's housing crisis that has made 'the American dream,' or in this case, 'the Canadian dream,' feel like a distant fantasy.
There's a specific line in the first verse that captures this tension perfectly. "They're not making any more new land."
Kalle Mattson:
I thought that was really funny, and like something that your grandpa would say to you about buying a house as if it was so simple. And, you know, whatever house or land that he bought cost one year's salary, and any house that you wanna buy now would take 20 years salary, basically.
Robert Howell:
He's right. It does sound like something you'd find at a needlepoint pillow in a grandfather's study. Sage, old timey advice. But in the context of this song, it rings with a kind of cynical defeat. The gap between the simple advice of the past and the economic reality of the present is where the song lives. It's acknowledging that for Kalle Mattson, and his band mate, Andrew Sowka, who form the duo “summersets,” returning to their hometown of Sault Ste. Marie isn't just a sentimental journey, it's a recalibration of life priorities.
One thing I love about this track is how seamless the construction feels, yet it was actually pieced together from different sources. While summersets is Kalle and Andrew, the song has a third person in the mix. Liam Simpson-Russell. It turns out the song's structure is a hybrid. The 'A section' of the verses, that melody that pulls you in right away, was actually something Liam had written for something else entirely. Kalle took that fragment, added the 'B section,' and built the concept of moving back home around it.
Kalle Mattson:
We wrote all the lyrics together for it and created the character and the structure about how it's put together.
Robert Howell:
That collaborative process, taking Liam's existing melody and retrofitting it with new meaning, might seem backwards itself. But it's fitting for a song about moving in unexpected directions. The 'A section' became the foundation, and Kalle built the house on top of it.
The character they invented to inhabit that house is interesting. He's not a hero. He's a bit of a ‘fuckup’ in Kalle's words. Someone who's trying to do the right thing by his partner, but keeps stumbling. And because of that, the lyrics balance on a fine line between tragedy and comedy. Take the line of the second verse: "In therapy that they can't afford."
It strikes me as such a clinical, practical observation, to put in a folksy sounding song. It grounds the track in a harsh financial reality. But when I asked Kalle about it, I was surprised to learn he wasn't trying to be profound or risky. He was just trying to be funny.
Kalle Mattson:
I had "In therapy that you can't afford," or "...that we can't afford," as a line for months and months before he wrote this song. So I was always trying to find a way to insert it into something. I do remember writing that line because I think it's funny, and I guess it's a harsh reality, but for me it was always meant to be funny more than anything.
Robert Howell:
That humor is a defense mechanism. It's the narrator admitting the situation is dire, but refusing to wallow in it. There's a specific generational tone here, acknowledging systemic problems while trying to laugh through them. It's gallows humor for the housing crisis generation.
There's a specific moment in the vocal delivery that catches my ear every time. It happens on words like "roundabout" and "block." Most singers would sing the word 'block' as a single punchy syllable. But here it gets stretched and bent into two distinct sounds.
I assumed this was a calculated melodic choice. But Kalle, who actually teaches songwriting at the university level, admits that this wasn't about the X's and O's of composition.
Kalle Mattson:
A lot of what I try to rely on is instinct over intellect. I use that intellect when I'm stuck or sparingly and try to really focus on instinct in my ear and what feels natural.
Robert Howell:
It is that instinct over intellect approach that gives the song its loose human feel. It sounds like a conversation, not a recital.
That conversational quality extends to the production itself. There's a roominess to this recording that's very intentional. You don't hear the tight gridlock perfection of modern pop. You hear musicians playing together in a space, which creates an intimacy that mirrors the song's subject matter. People trying to find a home.
They recorded the song with their friend and producer, Jim Bryson in Ontario, and they set a strict limitation for themselves. No electric guitars.
That slide sound you hear isn't an electric lap steel, it's a Dobro. By sticking to acoustic instruments, piano, upright bass, acoustic guitars, and the Dobro, they achieved a texture that feels lived in. Kalle mentioned that the musical inspiration was actually from Tom Petty's "Wild Flowers" and "Full Moon Fever" era. Albums that share this same warm acoustic intimacy.
But there's something else happening with these production choices. By recording live in a room together using vintage instruments like Kalle's 1952 Martin O-18 guitar, they're creating the sound of the very thing the song's narrator is trying to achieve. A real, tangible space where people connect. The production isn't just aesthetically pleasing, it's aspirational. It sounds like the living room of the house they're trying so desperately to buy.
Kalle Mattson:
We wanted it to feel like people playing music together, not like people editing sounds together, if that makes sense.
Robert Howell:
As the song winds down, we're left with the central question. Is moving back home a defeat? Is it giving up? The narrator is trying to convince his partner, and perhaps himself, that this step backwards is actually a strategic retreat. A way to survive. There's a sleeper line that appears right at the end of the final verse.
"Rather this than end up alone."
That phrase reframes the entire struggle. The housing crisis, the financial anxiety, the therapy bills. All of that is manageable as long as the relationship survives. The location doesn't matter as much as the company.
And for Kalle personally, there was another layer of truth woven into the lyrics. He mentioned the line "One of these nights, I'm gonna get some sleep."
Kalle Mattson:
I remember I was like really sleeping terribly at this time, so that was pretty autobiographical. I was trying to tell myself that I would get some sleep. Also, like I would tell myself that one day I'm gonna own a house.
Robert Howell:
It's a song about the things we tell ourselves to get through the night. Whether it's promising to pay the bills, promising to get some sleep, or promising that moving back to where we started is actually the start of something new.
“Songs Never Heard" is created and produced by me, Robert Howell. It's a tribute to all the seldom heard music that, in my opinion, rivals what you'd hear on the popular charts.
Until next time, keep writing.