Summer songs traditionally have an unfair advantage. They get cars with the windows down, imprudent decisions, swimming pools, romances improved by temporary geography. Soft Vein’s new single Another Summer seems suspicious of all that. Justin Chamberlain approaches the season as someone might regard an old photograph found in a drawer: with affection, perhaps, but also with the knowledge that whatever happened there has already escaped its participants. The title suggests recurrence, but Chamberlain sounds interested in what recurrence fails to restore. Another season comes around. The people inhabiting it have changed.
The song, the final single from Soft Vein’s forthcoming All We’ve Known of Heaven, has some of the suave composure of Robert Palmer and the eccentric pop intelligence of John Foxx and Peter Gabriel. A rounded bass line moves beneath clipped vocal phrases and lush synthesizers, which periodically rise around Chamberlain without swallowing him. The staccato chant and hook are especially good, giving an otherwise sumptuous ballad a curious nervousness, as though somebody has prepared the perfect sentence and then discovered that speaking it aloud changes its meaning.
This year, Soft Vein has moved further toward synthpop, although Chamberlain retains a detached, cerebral chill. Another Summer may be the most persuasive argument yet for that development: a beautiful arrangement can make emotional confusion more acute. The bass has an almost tactile roundness; the keyboards occasionally widen into luminous sheets; his voice stays exposed in the middle, stylish without becoming mannered. Every element appears to know exactly how much room it should occupy.
Chamberlain sings softly, often close enough to conversational volume that his restraint becomes part of the song’s psychology. Soft Vein has always been interested in the humiliations of wanting something from another person: reassurance, sex, permanence, an explanation. Another Summer finds him contemplating communication; his delivery has the attractive uncertainty of a person willing to disclose something before deciding whether disclosure was wise.
That divided temperament has followed Soft Vein from 2023’s Pressed in Glass through Through Blinds, the 2024 record that brought Chamberlain’s songwriting into sharper focus. The 2025 EP From Another Room, featuring remixes by Twin Tribes and Qual alongside covers of formative artists, offered a useful bridge.
All We’ve Known of Heaven is now available for preorder ahead of its release through Artoffact Records. Soft Vein will mark the album with a September 11 Los Angeles release show at Zebulon, presented by Minty Boi, with Catherine Moan as direct support and Secret Attraction opening. Buy tickets here.
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