Photo Credit: Gabe Drechsler
Written By: Oliver Heffron
Recent Nuance Cover Artist Arlie drops new psychedelic, colorful lof-fi visuals for “Cool,” the most acid-era Beatles influenced track off the Nashville indie set’s standout sophomore LP BREAK THE CURSE. Directed by longtime collaborator Gabe Drechsler, the trippy music video features frontman Nathaniel Banks within a VHS, color-block world performing in a series of vibrant costumes, including a mad scientist and caped superhero, in a fuzzy, nostalgic and subtly unsettling video. “Cool” is the most recent in a slew of music videos from BREAK THE CURSE, including “Break the Curse,” “Landline,” and “Sickk.”
The analog psychedelia of the video perfectly matches the spirit of “Cool,” which Nathaniel Banks describes as “10 Beatles songs on top of each other, but filtered through more modern psychedelic tonal sensibilities.” The outlandish wardrobe changes reflect the self-ridiculing lyrics of the song, as Banks embodies the distance he feels from the coolness others see in him, but he never finds in himself: ‘Like I do in a lot of my songwriting, I’m sort of ridiculing myself in these lyrics: ‘people seem to think i’m cool sometimes when we first meet, i don’t know why, it’s very strange.’”
To learn more about Nathaniel Banks and his long journey to Break The Curse, be sure to check out Nuance’s latest Zine Issue, featuring Cover Artist Arlie. Also, be sure to check out Arlie’s recent live session with Nuance, “N The Sticks.”