“Summary is ‘a document of the body as a record’ - an intensely individual attempt to codify the emotional upheaval of a traumatic five months around the summer of 2006. The songs record the idiosyncratic nature of thought processes, with the repetitive melodies and stream of consciousness lyrics, capturing exactly the indirect speech and leaps of logic that occur in one’s head. As a result, Summary is Barr’s darkest and most complex record yet. Impassioned and articulate, it trawls the depths of relationships and explores the potential of catharsis. As Brendan says in the first single from the record - the aptly named ‘The Song Is The Single’ - it is ‘a conduit to give out a feeling in a compact form’. The body and the record become one and the same.
"Over the course of the nine songs, the listener’s comfort zone is stretched to its elastic limit and beyond. From the indescribably dark ‘Complete Consumption Of Us Both’ - which deals with the emotional pain of a break-up and its transition into a ‘nervous working present’ - to the rallying cry of ‘Half Of Two Times Two’ - which contemplates the relationship between the personal and the political, and wonders at the scale of one’s place in the world.
"With Summary, Brendan has written an album that sounds like no other - a classic piece of work that is all-encompassing in its ability to affect. Whether via the dramatic simplicity of the music or the raw and expressive lyrics, it is an album that speaks to everyone, a body and a record of us all.”
–Upset! The Rhythm
