Living in the suburbs goes a little bit like this: You go to school, you learn to drive, and one day you leave. Everything is familiar — the big-box stores, that one pond you and your friends used to visit on Fridays nights to do "stuff," running to the late-night grocery store because sticky-gummy candy only tastes good at 2 in the morning. Turnip King's new video for "Carsong" feels like the suburbs in all of its comforts and kindness.
Turnip King is a psych-rock band with Cal Fish and Lucia Arias on guitar and vocals, Christian Billard on drums and Ken Winfield on bass. They're from Sea Cliff, N.Y., which is a suburb on Long Island. "Carsong" is a long, slow shoegaze song that hearkens back to the noisy loveliness of bands like The Jesus And Mary Chain, Mazzy Star and Slowdive. The guitar reverb is all wall-of-sound, waxing and waning over the bass and the vocals of Lucia Arias. Over the course of four and half minutes, it moves from creaky silence to lush, full-blown distortion. In an email to NPR Music, Arias writes that the song references "a golf course close to our homes, where Cal, Christian, Nick (our first bassist) and I had hung out at various points." Arias adds, "I wanted to conjure up an image of what it felt like to spend time with someone you absolutely adore in the silence, freedom, comfort and privacy of a car."
Aesthetically, the video uses tape and effects for a home-movie feel. It features scenes of Arias and her friend Becca walking around parking lots, under bridges and in playgrounds. "Carsong" is the second single from Turnip King's debut album Laika, which comes out August 19 via Firetalk.
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