Kevin Bronson on December 27th, 2018

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Summer Darling were never the biggest band in Silver Lake, but the quartet in many ways embodied the scene of the 2000s. They were absolutely passionate and resolutely uncompromising. Their music was brutal in its honesty and brilliant in its complexity. Their shows felt like beer being poured on hot wires. Or the truth being poured down your throat, with frontman Ben Heywood holding open your jaws. It said once on these pages that Summer Darling were “an indie-rocker’s indie rockers,” and if you think that is a quaint notion, go back to scrolling through your favorite pop artist’s selfies on Instagram.

Summer Darling slugged it out for a decade. Heywood, Heather Bray and Dan Rossiter formed the band in 2002. Ben and Heather married in 2005. They went through a bunch of drummers, a slew of DIY tours and more cases of beer than you’d care to count. They toured with OK Go, opening for them at downtown’s Nokia Theater. They made three albums and three EPs for three labels, the last for Origami Records, Neil Schield’s imprint that predated his Origami Vinyl record shop on Sunset Boulevard. That band’s own history characterizes their music astutely: “Too angular to be pop music but too pop-minded to be math rock.”

A small but devout core of fans got it. The band’s 10-year anniversary show in 2012 was sold out — and the next album was already written. But Summer Darling was on its last legs, unraveling due to Ben Heywood’s struggles with addiction and depression. At his wife’s behest, he sought treatment, and in 2013 Summer Darling recorded what would be a posthumous release, “Abandoner,” a dark, intense album informed by those woes and the suicide of a former bandmate. The plainspoken ballad “You Can Be Something” is exemplary of the “Abandoner’s” nerves-exposed honesty. “You can be loved / I hope that you knew / Saying goodbye / is not easy to do,”  Heywood laments.

Fast-forward five years, and Summer Darling lives on, in spirit. The Heywoods run the Chain Letter Collective, the label they founded in 2015 with Rose Campbell, which has released music by bands such as FACIAL, Low Hum, Dimber, QunQ and Manuok.

And on Jan. 11, Chain Letter Collective will release Summer Darling’s entire catalog (much of it on streaming services for the first time). Proceeds from all the releases will benefit MusiCares, a charity that assists musicians who struggle with addiction. For fans of math-y guitars, first-wave emo, invigorating arrangements and blunt lyricism, the reissues will be well worth investigating.

||| Stream: “Outer Dark” (from 2013’s “Abandoner”) and “My Reminder” (from 2010’s “Summer Darling”)

||| Watch: The videos for “Liberty St.” and “Son”