Get on the zine

Summer Camp released their third LP, Bad Love, this week, and as well as doing a handful of promotional in store performances, they brought out their second ever zine. Full of comics, poetry and prose from fans who are also friends, ‘Drive Past My House’ is a snazzy addition to any fan’s collection, and perfectly complements their dreamy, high-school rom-com aesthetic.

Highlights come in the form of comics from Babak Ganjei of Wet Paint and Absentee, whose other work includes ‘Clarkson Blackout’ which improves Jeremy Clarkson’s autobiography by selectively deleting 90% of the text, and John Allison, creator of ‘Scary Go Round’ whose illustrations imagine Summer Camp’s writing process, involving Eric Clapton, a time-machine and 1995.

Many contributors are regular ‘zine’ folk, but comic novices will recognise Emmy The Great’s name, and her Instagram-friendly centrefold is a novel take on the comic panel concept. A scripted section sounds like it could be a spoken word introduction to their album; think Savages’ ‘Shut Up’ or every track on The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.

Inevitable comparisons of Summer Camp’s sound to American teen movies of the 90s, à la Clueless, are even truer since they wrote and performed every song on the soundtrack for ‘Beyond Clueless’, Charlie Lyne’s documentary about this art form as a better indication of the zeitgeist than adult movies of the same era. The zine certainly fits with this. Prose pieces describe ‘Michelles’, ‘Donnys’ and archetypal teen heartthrob Brandon Routh, of Superman Returns fame.

The album itself is full of pleasing marital harmonies, and whilst maintaining that familiar Summer Camp sound there are stand out tracks. ‘Keep Out’ is unlike anything we’ve heard from them before. It’s an aggressive, marching to meet your ex tune and manages to feel fresh whilst having that oh so familiar chord progression. Jeremy, who usually sticks to complimenting Elizabeth Sankles’ main harmony part, takes centre-stage in ‘You’re Gone’, where he quietly repeats aspirational lyrics against fuzzy guitars on the most raucous song on the album.

Is the zine necessary for full enjoyment of the album? Probably not. If you’re not into comics, illustration or particularly obsessed with the band then you might not bother. But, if you’re not particularly familiar with them, but know you like their sound and vibe, it might be worth investing in. Your investment being £3, and considering you’ll likely as not stream the album, it might be nice to have a physical object to associate with them. In the way that music videos are important, from the days of MTV to the present, where video-streaming counts towards chart position, band released music zines are another way to connect to fans. They’re saying: we like this, visually this is our vibe, and do you like it too? In this way, the zine isn’t necessarily just ‘one for the fans’.

"It feels like they made it purely for shits and gigs."

Summer Camp curated their own zine, and you very much get that impression. It’s personal, some of the comics take the mickey out of themselves and in no way is it decadent or self-indulgent, without being firmly tongue in cheek. Will zines become the done thing across the board, or amongst big selling artists? Although interesting to see what your favourite bands are interested in visually, it’s hard to imagine bigger artists curating a zine without being pretentious as Summer Camp manage. You really get the impression that the band are quite nice; there’s little hint of self-congratulation, and it feels like they made it purely for shits and gigs. They are luckier in the sense that they don’t have to worry so much about marginalising the tastes of fans; Beyoncé would probably struggle to curate something that would please the entirety of her huge fanbase. Unless it was just selfies. Which I would inevitably still fork out for.

Music zines don’t begin and end with artist-curated collections. It would be wrong to talk about music zines without mentioning the glorious ‘Not A New Wave’, a Sleater-Kinney fanzine curated by One Beat. Without any involvement from Carrie Brownstein’s riot grrrl collective, uber fans who happened to be artists or writers got together to make a cheap and cheerful celebration of the band over 35 pages. I’m not being rude, One Beat pride themselves on producing financially accessible material.

"What seems most exciting is how inclusive they are."

The fanzine’s only £4, and so significantly cheaper than, and arguably more personal than a band tee. These zine-makers specialise in strong feminist influences, and are putting out a whole book on punk-rock feminism later this year. What seems most exciting is how inclusive they are. The zine scene doesn’t seem like such an exclusive boy’s club; e-mail addresses are on the site, so if you’re a small time illustrator or just a fan they seem pretty welcome to contributions.

Like fan clubs subscribed to by fans in the 50s and 60s, zines give people an arena to discuss and create content around the band’s themes, whilst simultaneously creating content that other fans will inevitably want to see. In this way, it’s like an annual, like those ones you get in W H Smiths around Christmas, except written by people who share your interests who happened to be good at drawing.

All zines mentioned are available at Gosh! Comics in Soho. Summer Camp’s LP, Bad Love, is out now.