from music video for "Sewage Bay Atlantic"
by Chance Solem-Pfeifer
From sea to shining drainage pipe.
No, the Atlantic Ocean wasn’t quite the majestic vista the Omaha indie rock trio Places We Slept had imagined. They visited last summer while touring through the Boston area. And when a booking agent named Kimberly offered to take them down to the water around 2 a.m. after their performance, it looked a lot more like a sewage run-off.
“Nathan (Ma, percussion) kept emphasizing that he really wanted to see the Atlantic Ocean,” says Places We Slept bassist J.D. Brokenrope. “We parked in this Walgreens parking lot and we walk a mile or so. She just presents this big hole of water as the Atlantic Ocean and is like, ‘Here you go!’”
The letdown and humor of the moment ushered Ma and the band into a new song, “Sewage Bay Atlantic,” the first release from Places We Slept’s forthcoming album Peeled.
But if the reality of the “ocean” was a disappointment, the band relied on its collective imagination for the new “Sewage Bay Atlantic” music video. The white walls and yellowed couch of a friend’s rather ordinary basement are easily displaced with the addition of a green screen, which projects images of lily pads and flowers on a reflective pond behind the trio. It’s a visual that might conflict with the idea of sewage, but brightly colored flowers are the aesthetic that tie the whole of Peeled together from video to album cover.
An uproarious crowd of teenage girls can be seen in the second half of the video bludgeoning each other with pillows and swooning over a miniature projection of the band on a small television, like a surreal reinterpretation of watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. It’s a “cheesy pop” idea that Brokenrope says makes for a contrast to the ugly disappointment wrapped up in the lyrics.
“I thought it was pretty clever on Nathan’s part,” Brokenrope says.
Places We Slept will release their record tonight at O’Leaver’s in Omaha. They’ll support Icky Blossoms and Chicago’s Outer Minds.
While Brokenrope says he’s happy and confident about the more polished sound of Peeled — the band’s first studio effort, recorded by Bobby Rubalcava at ARC Studios — the bigger gamble came months before tonight’s release show when he let the crowd of teenage girls make wreckage of his living room while he was out of town.
“I saw a picture on Facebook of my living room just torn to shreds with junk food everywhere,” Brokenrope says. “I texted Mark (Johnson, guitar) and was like, ‘You’re planning on cleaning that up, right?’ (The video) looks good, though. Whatever needs to happen.”
Watch the slumber party chaos of director Emma Penrose’s video here:
Chance Solem-Pfeifer is Hear Nebraska’s staff writer. He would’ve have projected dinosaurs on the green screen because dinosaurs could crush flowers. C’mon, guys. Reach Chance at chancesp@hearnebraska.org.