The city of Philadelphia is fast becoming one of the premiere scenes for rock music. "Philly is really a pretty amazing place to be right now. It really feels like the right place and the right time. I think we've had a rare opportunity to put together a community of people that have all kinds of really interesting influences, and everybody plays on everybody else's records," says Gillian Chadwick, front woman and the creative force behind one such group, Ex-Reverie.

Chadwick's music presents an interesting synthesis of ideals. "I studied philosophy in college, and I studied aesthetics. My pet project was focusing on this idea of making a moment of your life a work of art. For me as a songwriter, that means I want that whole song to be like visiting another world," she reveals, before pointing out, "Its high concept stuff on some level, and on another level its just trying to make hot riffs."

Those 'hot riffs' are definitely evident on Ex-Reverie's first full length LP, The Door Into Summer, an album of folk and classic glam rock influences that come together with fantasy based lyrics to create a fresh perspective on humanity. "I think my influences are probably equally literary as they are musical for the whole project." Chadwick relates. "As far as Ex-Reverie, it's very much a picture of me as a person lyrically. As someone who really loves science fiction and fantasy. I wanted to get those elements and have the setting of the songs be slightly surreal landscapes just cause to me that's the tastiest thing to read about. I like the idea of creating other worlds and tapping into other atmospheres and yet also getting the same human element. The human condition is gonna stay the same, whatever the landscape is. It's still gonna be heartbreak and desire, and those big life questions."

"David Bowie really changed my life. His albums were more than just songs. It was a whole world that you could go to, this fun kind of identity that you could interact with. That's just something that I love about music," states Chadwick. "When you get into interacting with something that's fantasy based you have more freedom to explore different elements of your own identity."

Self-Exploration is definitely on of the themes of The Door Into Summer. When crafting the discs lyrics, Chadwick did a lot of that exploring herself, by going through her past. "I went back through old journals and pulled out, almost like puzzle pieces, different phrases here and there that I liked and put them all together and see where they would fit in the musical pieces that I already had. Inevitably that thing would come together as a cohesive thought," discloses Chadwick. "That was a really nice process cause it was almost like an insight to my own brain. To see how things fit together and say "Oh, that's what I'm thinking about, okay…"

"It was revealing myself through fragments. Some of the different lines in the songs may be about the same emotions, but they may be from different parts of my life. Its almost like an early Marcel Duchamp painting, where he would show the body in motion. For me I'm seeing a scene of my own life from a lot of different angles."

That personal touch gives Ex-Reverie's music a certain charm than is missing from a lot of today's bigger groups. The album was made for personal satisfaction, not to satisfy a contract, or score a hit. "It's a record that had been in my mind for a long time." she says. "I'd spent the last few years playing in my husbands band, playing lead guitar, which was very musically satisfying, but its really nice to put together a collection of my own songs and be the co-producer, the arranger, and get to conceive a concept all the way through. That's definitely a labor of love."

Classic acoustic guitar melds with dirty electric sounds to create the Ex-Reverie sound.  A combination that is not always the easiest to pull off. "More and more these days I feel like I hear in my head what I want the records to sound like, what I want the guitar tone to be, and how I want the acoustic and electric to mix. That's a big thing with my music, trying to find that balance between the acoustic folk and the really heavy psyche out stoner rock that I love," Chadwick states with a clear passion.

Chadwick has a true love of music, one that she explored scholastically as well as emotionally. "I actually went to school for jazz for a while," she imparts. "Part of my jazz experience was people trying to make you feel like rock music is just lame and too low brow to be appreciated. But I think that's really overlooking the visceral impact that it can have on you. Putting on a great rock song can completely up your mood and energy levels immediately. I wanna tap into the physical side of music, but also the cerebral thing is a big part of my life. That's the great thing about a rock song, because you can have all of the physical reactions, but then you can also have lyrics."

Emotional melodies and poignant lyrics echo in spades on The Door Into Summer, particularly on the introductory track, "Second Son". Chadwick's sultry voice dances over a light accompaniment, before the chorus erupts with a heavily distorted electric guitar. The gruff sound guitars are juxtaposed against lighter, dreamy vocals, giving the track unexpected warmth. The same can be said of "The Crowning", a bluesy number that started out with a clear cut intent.