Jack River Announces New Album ‘Endless Summer’ and Shares Genesis Owusu Collab

Jack River has announced her second album, Endless Summer, will arrive on Friday, 16th June via I OH YOU. She’s released the album’s Genesis Owusu-assisted title track to coincide with announcment. The track was co-written with DMA’S guitarist Matt Mason.

“Mason had had the verse melody in his back pocket for years,” River said in a statement. “As soon as he played it, I fell in love, and the scene of an endless summer was born in our minds.”

Watch the Video for Jack River’s ‘Endless Summer’ Below

River – aka Holly Ranking – brought the track to life with co-producer Matt Corby. “We had so, so much fun layering vocals and finding sounds that kept the song minimal, but potent,” she said. Owusu then added his guest vocals. “Bringing Genesis on to join the track was a pipe dream that turned into reality,” Rankin said. “He brings his effortless brand of cool, calm and collected to the song.”

‘Endless Summer’s is the third preview of the record we’ve heard so far, following on from last year’s ‘Real Life’ and ‘Nothing Has Changed’. In a statement, Rankin explained that the album was written before she fell pregnant last year, but that the reality of the “endless summer we are entering globally” became “even more tactile” for her after the birth of her child.

“There is a part of the future beside me now, and she will experience the consequences of all the decisions we are making today,” Rankin said. “The experience of being pregnant and giving birth has made everything beautifully and awfully real. I think that sentiment plays out in this record.”

Rankin has a long history of interweaving the personal and political in her music. In 2021, she shared standalone single ‘We Are the Youth’, a protest anthem informed by her long-held passion for climate and environmental justice and written after performing to 80,000 young people at a School Strike 4 Climate rally. Last year, the song was nominated for the inaugural Environmental Music Prize.

Rankin released Sugar Mountain – her debut album as Jack River – back in 2018. She’s followed it up with one EP, 2020’s Stranger Heart.