Singer-songwriter Emily James has released her new album, Summer Nostalgia.
Deftly capturing the coming-of-age feeling of experiencing your first love, Summer Nostalgia is very much a continuation of Emily James’ 2025 EP, also titled Summer Nostalgia. A dreamy 12-song collection of slow ballads and pop jams, the album also tells the story of what happens when you and your first love reconnect after a long time apart.
“I want the experience of listening to the album to feel like watching a movie,” says Emily James. “We zoom into these little vignettes, zoom out a little bit to the present day, and then zoom back in. My favourite movies and books are those that play with time and memory, so with this album I really wanted to explore creating an interweaving timeline that flickers between the present and the past.”
The album definitely tells a story, even if by design it isn’t linear. Starting off with the piano ballad “Suburbia”, Emily James reminisces about an old love and what’s going on in their life now, before moving backwards to when the relationship originally started in “Under The Influence”, before “Underdog” moves swiftly onto the incident that broke the relationship originally.
The album then moves onto the dramatic “Tommy” and sees Emily James ponder unrequited feelings, before “Song For Bryan” wrestles with the pain of still being very much in love with someone who is no longer making themselves available for you, punctuated by pop sensibilities. Between these is “Blueprint”, which fittingly tells the story of how your past relationships can affect and inform current ones, before moving through to “Pretty 4Ever”, which takes a good look at how important female friendships are through the lens of an upbeat pop song.
The final third of the album then looks at wanting to give up parts of yourself when you meet a new love in “Uncommon Sense”, before the reconnection with the past love happens in “Picture It”, how this old love grows and matures through “Summer On Ice” and “Sunburn”, before the whole story finds its gentle ending in “Oranges”, which is in many ways a love letter to the kind of gentle, stable love that is created when two people understand each other very well.
According to Emily James herself, “it’s a very personal album, not in the sense that everything in there is exactly true, but there is truth in the feeling of each of these songs.”
Summer Nostalgia is a strong release for heading into the summer months with, and Emily James’ voice is the perfect narrator for the story she’s woven throughout the album.
