Houston’s Birthday Club basks in the warm glow of summer radiance on his new single, “Don’t Know When” released Friday.
Birthday Club is the pseudonym for musician Stephen Wells, who has been releasing bedroom dwelling synthpop since 2016. A mixture of pure pop acumen and bright instrumentals help Wells cultivate a sound that isn’t afraid to embrace the limelight, culminating in his debut LP Obscure Emotion.
On his new single “Don’t Know When,” Wells takes center stage with a litany of sun drenched synths, slick guitar licks and a standout performance built for festival stages. From the offset the track creates a joyful atmosphere conjuring images of summer road trips to the beach, skateboards rolling down the boardwalk and youthful abandonment.
“The process of writing and finishing this track was a really strange experience because the usual emotional release that tends to come with the completion of a new song was nearly non-existent,” wrote Wells in a statement on the track. “I was left with an awareness that there is just so much more work left for me to do before I can really let go of whatever this song was trying to express through me.”
Wells recycled negative energy into a bright spot where, hopefully, we can all return to days spent enjoying life rather than watching it slip away.
“Usually, I think that you can find yourself transmuting ‘smaller’ experiences into maybe one or three songs, but something so massive and intense as the emotional energy of this past year is probably going to take me an awful lot of time and music to work through,” He wrote. “I think that’s an experience that everyone can relate to right now.”