Summerbruise Say It Best on Infinity Guise: “Man! I Feel Like a Dumbass”
Summerbruise. Photo credit: Nat Breeden.
When Summerbruise call themselves a “fake emo band,” they mean it affectionately — a wink shared with everyone who’s ever cried at a PUP show or screamed a Motion City Soundtrack lyric from the backseat of a car. Their latest album, Infinity Guise, leans into that self-awareness with songs like “Man! I Feel Like a Dumbass,” a tongue-in-cheek nod to Shania Twain’s country-pop classic. The record is full of jokes that hit too close to home, with anthems for people who overthink their DMs, and easter eggs for listeners who can spot an AJJ reference at twenty paces.
Frontperson Mike Newman laughs describing how the band’s Shania Twain parody almost didn’t make the cut. “I was devastated to realize we capitalized the ‘A’ wrong,” he says. “She capitalizes the ‘A’ in hers! I like getting those rip-offs exactly right.”
That detail-obsessive humour is Summerbruise in a nutshell. What began as a two-piece breakup project in 2016 has grown into a five-member collective who are all in on the joke. “I’d never written a song before. After college, I just started writing songs out of the blue after a big breakup as one does. I got to start a band, which I'd always wanted to do,” Newman admits. Their record, Infinity Guise out now via SideOneDummy Records, channels the same self-deprecating wit that’s always been part of emo, but with an awareness that borders on meta-comedy.
“It’s a fake-emo record that actually feels real,” Newman says. “I didn’t even listen to emo in high school. I was mostly into rap and that’s why I care so much about lyricism. I’m not interested in tippy-tappy riffs; I’m interested in wordplay.”
That crossover mentality shows. The album is full of allusions: nods to AJJ, Motion City Soundtrack, and PUP slide naturally between bars, mirroring the way rappers weave intertextual references into their verses. “I love when a rapper drops a line that makes you go, ‘Oh, he likes that thing I like,’” Newman says. “It’s not just a trick — it’s a way of connecting. I wanted that for our songs.”
The band’s earliest records were born from grief: a breakup, the death of a friend, and later the passing of Newman’s father. “I was writing from a place of loss,” he says. “These songs became the only way to talk about it.” What began as solitary writing sessions in a pirated copy of Logic eventually turned into a community project that thrives on collaboration, trust, and friendship.
Their 2025 lineup solidified after years of touring with fill-ins. Now a full-fledged team, the group has found new chemistry. “We used to joke about staying a two-piece forever,” Newman says. “But having four or five people means it’s easier, more fun. Everyone has a role. We finally feel like a band instead of an experiment.”
Recording the new album felt like a revelation. For the first time, every member contributed to songwriting. “It was the first time I’d ever written with a band instead of by myself,” Newman says. “Watching insanely talented people make something without the overthinking — that was awesome.”
The record’s humour extends to its features, too. Tades Sanville of Hot Mulligan is featured on “Cookie Monster Snapback” and Carpool — their longtime friends and tourmates — appear on a track that accidentally began as a Carpool song. “I was outside writing lyrics while they jammed inside,” Newman recalls. “Then I ran in and said, ‘Play it again!’ and [Carpool] stops, turns around, and goes, ‘That’s our new song.’ So we just used those lyrics for the Summerbruise-Carpool track instead.”
That story also led, indirectly, to their signing with SideOneDummy. The label’s manager Phil Bender-Simon discovered the band after Carpool kept vouching for them. “Phil came to one of our shows,” Newman says. “He bought us drinks and then left the table for fifteen minutes to let his friends talk to us. He wanted honest opinions from his friends about whether the band’s actually cool to hang out with. That’s how much he cares about working with good people.”
Newman grins. “If the label was called Shitass Records for Dumb Idiots, I’d still sign if Phil was running it.”
Despite the jokes, the songs themselves cut deep. Beneath the irony lies exhaustion and that stubborn glint of hope that’s kept emo alive through a dozen revivals. “I used to always try to end an album with a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel and inject some hope,” Newman says. “This one doesn’t really do that. I guess we’ll see what people take from it.”
Still, there’s optimism in the band’s evolution — from DIY tours to signing with one of punk’s most beloved indie labels. They’ve built their career on friendship, humour, and the faith that being nice actually matters. “Honestly, just be nice for eight or nine years,” Newman laughs. “Eventually good things happen. We owe a lot to people thinking we are nice and we know it’s important to still always be just that.”
Summerbruise may joke about being “fake emo,” but their honesty feels truer to the genre than ever — proof that sometimes the dumbest punchline hides the smartest heart. Their latest album, Infinity Guise, is out now.
