Oly Sherman

Sydney songwriter Oly Sherman has been putting in the work for a while now. Coming out of the city’s indie-folk lane, he started with early singles like Push Me Down and the Embrace and Three Oh Three EPs, quietly building a following off the back of steady touring and supports for names like Kim Churchill, Alex the Astronaut and Thelma Plum. His thing sits somewhere between folk, indie and soul, with that Matt Corby / Boy & Bear school of songwriting in the DNA without feeling like a photocopy.

In 2021 he pulled that momentum into his debut album Land Of All Pretend, a front-to-back, summery guitar record that arrived just as winter hit. The album rolls through tracks like Homeboy, The World Is In A Bad Room and Lush Lyfe with KP Hydes, then into later singles Taste, Dancin’ In The Rain and Hallucinate, showing how comfortable he is letting groove and atmosphere sit next to more classic folk writing. It’s the catalogue of someone who has spent a lot of time in small rooms figuring out exactly how he wants these songs to land live.

In The Summer is one of the key cuts from that first album. Written in the middle of a rough breakup and later described by Sherman as a “peaceful breakup song”, it plays like a slow exhale rather than a blow-up, all acoustic shimmer and light percussion wrapped around lyrics about waking up alone. Press picked up on the warmth straight away, calling out the “oceanic” feel of the melody and the way his vocal sits right on top of it, like late sun on concrete after the heat has gone.