Surprises, the solo project of Brooks Paschal (frontman of emo band Sullivan), released a new music video for his track “I Can’t See You Em” via Spartan Records. The video incorporates clips from old campy horror movies to illustrate the inescapability of anxiety.
About the track and video, Brooks Paschal stated:
“My main objective was to capture the inescapability of anxiety. I knew that I didn’t want to make a traditional music video in that the performance had to be part of the landscape. I wanted the viewer/listener to feel that I was trapped in whatever space I was in. I had the idea of using the old footage while watching ‘Kingdom of the Spiders’. There was something that was authentic and completely unrepeatable about it. A director buddy of mine pointed me to archive.org. I watched hours of footage to find the moments that really sold the recklessness of the song. The one thing I noticed looking back was the commonality of the shots I chose despite the different decades of the footage. There was a cohesion that made me believe in the song more and hopefully will give folks another reason to listen/watch.”
After releasing three successful albums with the fan-adored band Sullivan and dozens of solo tracks over the past ten years, songs seem to emanate from all levels of the musician’s consciousness. His new project, however, is something different. Surprises is cathartic, reckless, and personal. This new project has taken the musician into personally unchartered territory as a songwriter. Where conceptually all lyrical material for Sullivan was purely fictional storytelling, Surprises delves heavily into his personal experiences.
The timing for this nuanced stylistic change could not be better. Having both recorded and toured successfully in the early 2000s, a sonic time period that many young emo and indie bands are now trying to emulate, ‘Natural Disaster’ is set apart as an album that is both relevant and mature. The album is a concentrated amalgamation of all the driving, melodic, soaring, and fragile moments that made his previous work with Sullivan so appealing. Much of the authenticity of the sound can be attributed to all of the production, engineering, and mixing being handled directly by the musician himself.
The debut LP ‘Natural Disaster’ is out now via Spartan Records.
Photo Credit: Taylor Thomas Paschal
