You can spend a lot of time wondering where the line between postmodern deconstruction and ‘what the fuck is this?’ lies. And Swedish band Canary Islands are putting in the effort to see if that particular shark is jumpable with the video for their new single Try, which was released at the start of March. Because they’ve taken the phrase ‘about as entertaining as watching paint dry’, and decided to figure out exactly how entertaining that is. And you can see the results of that experiment exclusively today, as we’re got the premiere right here.
The song Try itself is a beautiful piece of dreamy, breezy melodic indie rock. And the video is, well, pretty self-explanatory. When we called up the band to ask ‘well, why would you do this?’, they said:
The video for Try came about after a long discussion about a music video’s meaning and function. Before the launch of our upcoming album Canary Islands III we had planned to have really snazzy videos for our singles. Then Peter, our drummer, put together our budget and we quickly realised that we couldn’t afford Johan Renck [director of videos for Bowie and Madonna].
Lacking money, we could have of course done a creative and fun DIY thing, but all our ideas seemed to be impossible without Johan Renck. Luckily, we found some paint, a family-sized pizza box and a dear friend with a camera. Budget: 0 kr. Production time: 25 mins (roughly). We’re looking forward to the MTV Music Awards!
Try is out now, and Canary Islands‘ new album Canary Islands III is out on Så Länge Skutan Kan Gå Records on April 27
