With his newest outing ‘One Summer Gone’, Oaken Lee delivers a gently aching memory in under two and a half minutes, an audial snapshot that distils the quiet euphoria and inevitable transience of young love. It’s a soft-focus recollection of two people wrapped in their own bubble, with time slipping past unnoticed, only to later catch up. In the words of Lee, “‘One Summer Gone’ is a celebration of that couple, and that Summer”.
Built on a modest bed of lo-fi textures and hushed vocals, the track treads the line between warm nostalgia and melancholic acceptance. The frontman weaves acoustic elements and rough-edged synths together with understated elegance. You can feel the influence of artists like King Creosote and LCD Soundsystem’s more delicate moments. The melody wanders casually, like the pair it depicts, until it fades out with the weight of what’s unsaid.
The production is charmingly homespun. Recorded in a London flat but coloured by the countryside of Shropshire, the track incorporates ambient snippets of found sound fragments that act as memory triggers. These little audio souvenirs elevate the song from a simple folk vignette to something more textural and authentic.
There’s no drama in ‘One Summer Gone’, just the quiet turning of the season. In that way, it captures the unremarkable moments we only realise mattered once they’ve slipped into the past. It’s a beautiful final prelude to Oaken Lee’s forthcoming album ‘Home (is a folk-rock mixtape)’, and a testament to how the smallest stories can feel the most relatable.
