Good things come to those who wait and if you wait long enough then maybe there will be fireworks…or however the saying goes.

There Will Be Fireworks have been making music together in the central belt of Scotland since 2007. Or they did, at least, for six years or so, right up until their last full length The Dark, Dark Bright’s release in late 2013. I once saw a comment on the internet somewhere that said There Will Be Fireworks don’t have casual fans; they capture feelings that are often too hard to put into words and put them into words for you. There Will Be Fireworks make music to be lived with, music that adapts and grows alongside you. Truthfully, the band felt like my own little secret whilst navigating high school and I’d made peace with the fact that they probably wouldn’t resurface again. The Dark, Dark Bright felt like a milestone; felt like a band saying goodbye whilst going out with an almighty bang. But, there will be fireworks, of course, so the silence didn’t last forever and, almost 10 years (to the day) later, the sky is finally once again flooded with colour.

Amidst the silence came a few musical projects (Dead Modern, Tiny Skulls and New Year Memorial) but mostly, life just happened — happened in London and in Edinburgh, Amsterdam and Oban — but one thing remained constant: Glasgow was home. Glasgow is home and writing about the city and what life feels like here is maybe what There Will Be Fireworks do best. In a lot of ways, Summer Moon feels like a return to not only playing as a unit but to the city and how it shaped them all entirely; collectively and individually – from long nights in Sleazy’s basement to long days in the West End. There’s something special that the group have managed to capture so vividly throughout their discography and Summer Moon hones in on that completely: the subtleties and mundane of city life and everything that comes with navigating adulthood and relationships here…or anywhere, really. Because, at its core, this record is about what it means to be human and what it means to be alive. Glasgow is front and centre and background all the same: the immediate call out to Sparky’s Dream on blistering opener Smoke Machines, the ode to the Cathkin Braes and how the city looks so beautiful from up there if you catch it on the right evening.

Summer Moon came together in fragments. The band had been invited to perform in Munich in 2016 and shortly afterwards, after making noise in the same room again, everyone holed up together in a studio near Loch Fyne for a few weekends. From there, ideas became verses and verses became songs and songs became an album and There Will Be Fireworks were back. The record, a sprawling 13 track return, is difficult to pin down exactly. Summer Moon is a familiar conversation with an old friend but with something new to talk about, too. It’s blistering guitars and violin quartets all the same, ballads and symphonies and sweltering drums. It’s There Will Be Fireworks in the same room again, on the same page, making me feel the same things I did when I first heard River at sixteen.

Second City, Setting Sun, the penultimate track on Summer Moon, feels like a career best. It feels like There Will Be Fireworks doing everything they do so familiarly culminated into five minutes. It’s a track about ageing, “Now the summers come, and the summers go, we’re not growing up; we’re just getting old”, a track that begins so sparsely until the fabric is sewn together by the introduction of something new as it gently progresses: the delicate crescendo of violins, the constant pulsating beat of an ever-so-slightly open hi-hat.

“We’ve changed, in one hundred different ways, but my heart still beats the same,” Nicholas repeats on Something Borrowed, and it’s true. We grow and change and get older because that’s just what happens, but our hearts still save a little space for the places we grew up in and the people that made them home, even for a small while.

At least that’s how There Will Be Fireworks feel

and they want you to feel it all with them, too. 

Lauren t / monorail music