Summer Fiction

After a five-year hibernation, Bill Ricchini returns with a chamber pop masterpiece.

by A.D. Amorosi


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Published: Jan 12, 2011

BABY, IT'S YOU: The songs on Summer Fiction's self-titled album are about a pretty girl, told from the perspective of the guys who all fall for her.

Neal Santos

How is it that Bill Ricchini is everywhere all of a sudden? Philadelphia's baroque pop practitioner — the answer to the question, "What if Burt Bacharach and Sandie Shaw had a baby?" — has broken a five-year silence with a stunning and seemingly inescapable album.

At the end of 2010, the 36-year-old songwriting singer formed a band called Summer Fiction, then released a CD of the same name — and now finds himself a daily part of the music blogosphere. He's scored some ink in the printed world, too.

Did he hire some kind of high-powered publicist?

"I'm doing all of my media myself and am lucky enough to be popular in the Conde Nast building lately," says Ricchini. "Yeah, Vogue and New York liked it. Next stop, Ladies Home Journal." He guesses that some best-of-2010 nods on taste-making sites like Rawkblog snowballed into national media attention a few months later. He knows well the power of the blog. "I mean, my mom knows about Best Coast," he says.

Ricchini first made waves with chamber pop classics Ordinary Time in 2002 and Tonight I Burn Brightly in 2005.

The former, his bedroom-recorded debut CD, rings richly with surf pop's swirl, fuzzy guitars and Ray Davies-esque lyrics in love with icons from the Catholic Church and British film stars couched in melancholy melodies. "You look just like Julie Christie/ I feel just like Terry Stamp," he sings.

TIBB, as Ricchini abbreviates the latter, had a Todd Rundgren-ish vibe and was larger in scope — full band, hookier hooks, more mournful ballads — without lacking in the intimacy department. "TIBB is solid, less of a complete thought than the new record, or even Ordinary Time, but just a class set of songs beautifully recorded," says Ricchini now.

He speaks fondly of writing much of TIBB — originally "a concept album about ghosts and monsters" — in a heady weekend rush after being laid up with a ravaging flu during a blizzard and having intense fever dreams. "When the Morning Comes" is about a vampire but also about morning sex. "She Don't Come Around Here Anymore" is a girl-ghost love song and an homage to Rundgren's "I Saw the Light."

The Toddness doesn't end there: TIBB was recorded nearly live with Ricchini, Brian Christinzio (of BC Camplight) and Spacehog bassist Royston Langdon, who was Rundgren's son-in-law at the time. "Liv Tyler brought us cookies in the studio," smiles Ricchini.

After TIBB, Ricchini drifted away into domestic bliss in his new Philly house, years filled with cozy Saturdays spent at Home Depot, nights centered around crock pot cooking sessions. But there was still music left in him. "Sometimes the best way to write songs is to just live and not try to write songs."

Ricchini unplugged the crock pot and spent a summer writing Summer Fiction, and a year recording it with what he estimates was 30 musicians in and out of his bedroom studio "doing take after take."

He mixed it twice, and didn't leave the house for months. What followed was a record about a pretty girl, told from the point of view of the heartbroken guys who fall for her.

Asked to truly elaborate on Summer Fiction 's moody view on adult life, Ricchini sounds winded. "You're getting deep, A.D. Let's delve into my psyche."

For he and his band of musicians — fellow whiskey drinkers and Pho eaters — Summer Fiction is Criterion Collection films, slim suits, strings, reverb, songs about girls and waltzes all leaning toward Bacharach-like songs with Hal David-esque poetry.

"I guess we can deduce that the record is about coming of age on songs like 'Kids in Catalina' and 'She's Bound to Get Hurt,'" he claims. There's a lot of being in love with life, too; see "Carry On."

"There's something about digging in and buying a house and laying down roots in a city that screams late '30s," he muses. "Freud would say I'm trying to recapture the summer after high school. But if that were the case the record would sound like Pearl Jam, and no one wants that."

What everybody wants is a tune like "Chandeliers": romantic self-destruction set to an upbeat pop melody. We watch helplessly as a young man falls for a femme fatale. We know it will end badly. And cinematically.

"The narrative is told almost like a crime scene — an unmade bed, a pillowcase lipstick stain," says Ricchini, doing his best Raymond Chandler impersonation. "He knows it's over, yet he longs for his beloved trouble."

The scene is ended, but Summer Fiction continues. "I'm here to stay," says Ricchini.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net)