There’s no feeling quite like first love. Most will not last beyond adolescence or young adulthood, but the bittersweet sensations and coming-of-age impressions tend to stick around. In nostalgic moments, it’s all too easy to sink back into the memories of that time and parse out what you might have done differently if only you knew then what you know now. Singer-songwriter Emily James effortlessly captures this poignant rearview look on her intensely personal new EP, Summer Nostalgia, coming soon via Nettwerk Music Group. 

Emily’s inspiration for Summer Nostalgia poured out as she prepared to leave Los Angeles (where she had lived for the past seven years), to spend some time writing and recording in London. She now resides in Brooklyn, New York. “I missed the changing of seasons,” Emily says of her decision to move back to New York, where she’s originally from. “I like to be able to move around on my own. There are a lot of similarities between New York and London, and having that time there made me even more nostalgic for New York. This EP is about reflecting on your past, growing up, and reconnecting with those roots.” 

A dreamy six-track collection, Summer Nostalgia is Emily’s most intimate project yet and moves from ruminating slow ballads to euphoric pop jams while telling a story of two people reconnecting after years of distance. “It felt like I was watching a movie,” Emily adds. “You zoom into these little vignettes, and then you’ll zoom out a little bit to the present day, and then zoom back in. It felt like something I’d never done before in terms of having this interweaving timeline and flickering between present and the past, with memories coming in and out.” 

The narrative begins with opener “Suburbia,” which showcases Emily’s bell-clear vocals against poignant piano chords, soft harmonies, and a selection of voicemail recordings on the bridge. “There are flashes of people talking and laughter, snippets of voice notes from my friends, you can hear my childhood dog barking. It’s very personal,” Emily says of “Suburbia,” which was the first track she wrote for Summer Nostalgia. “As I wrote ‘Suburbia,’ I knew I wanted to call the whole EP Summer Nostalgia because it evoked this warm feeling of film, pictures, and the golden hour.” 

Meanwhile, the piano-driven “Under The Influence” is a vignette that transports you back to the beginning stages of the young couple falling in love. “It’s very pure, innocent, vulnerable, and intimate,” she says of “Under The Influence.” “It’s that moment of ‘should we or shouldn’t we?’ You have this platonic relationship, but feelings have developed, and it’s like, ‘I’d rather just go for this than wonder what could have been.’” 

Emily continues the story on “Underdog,” which flashes forward to the relationship’s inevitable conflict: “When it’s hell, yeah it’s hell… I’m holding on to what could be, but would it be better?” she wonders. “I see it as a tumultuous high school relationship where immaturity and incompatibility are rising to the surface,” Emily says. “The sound of ‘Underdog’ has an adolescent feel with angst and the inability to reign in emotions. This is the turning point of Summer Nostalgia.”  

Even after young love combusts and two people go their separate ways, the experience never really leaves you. On “Blueprint,” which jogs along with a pitter-pattering melody, Emily considers the impact first love has on ostensibly more mature romance. “Every new person just reminds you of them, because It was this formative relationship and has set the precedent of what you expect, for better or worse.” 

Will Emily’s protagonists ever find one another again? On “Picture It,” their reunion takes place on 2nd Ave in New York. Whether it’s wish fulfillment or reality, that doesn’t matter. “It’s open to interpretation,” Emily explains. “In my imagination, this is what it’s like to be back in the city near where you grew up, you’re both adults, you run into each other, and you feel all those feelings again. What if we gave this another shot? We don’t have to worry about the time that was lost; let’s just move forward.” 

Finally, Summer Nostalgia closes out with the liminal “Sunburn,” which Emily describes as “the reckoning.” After the lovers reconcile as adults, what do they have to gain by staying together? “It’s the realization of how you’re a different person now and unsure if you still fit together,” Emily says. “It feels good to hold on, is it going to impede my growth?” 

As we ponder the story, it becomes evident that Summer Nostalgia is more than a narrative about a relationship. The love interest in the story can also be interpreted as the personification of the protagonist’s hometown and the roots of youth. Summer Nostalgia is an ode to the ways in which our origins and foundational experiences define and inform who we are, how we see the world, and the ways in which we carry that with us. We can love something or someone, and appreciate what that history has given us, while also knowing we have outgrown it, and that it doesn’t fit with who we have grown into. 

Emily may not have answers to these questions on Summer Nostalgia, but her latest work does provide the universal soundtrack to coming of age in and around the place you used to call home. “It’s a very personal EP, but not in the sense that everything in there is exactly true,” she says. “But there is truth within each of those songs.” 

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