Photo by Brian Sweeney
There’s a lot going on in this video. For one: Giant cats. For two: Lasers. Giant cats with lasers firing out of their eyes (and their sophisticated vests) decimating a city! ARGH! Additionally, Minor Victories, a British indie supergroup of sorts—which includes Slowdive’s Rachel Goswell, Editors’ Justin Lockey, his (literal) bro James Lockey, and Stuart Braithwaite from Mogwai—have added another person from yet another band to their ranks for “Scattered Ashes (Song for Richard)”: the Twilight Sad’s James Graham. Oh and Mark Kozalek is also on the full length which drops this June.
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Mind your feet, dropping (indie) names faster than these kitties can destroy human civilization. In a little throwback nod to one of the finest sites on the world wide web, the cats communicate with each other in I Can Haz Cheezburger-speak. (Mmm. Burgers.)
“I wish there was some grand symbolic gesture behind this video… there isn’t,” says Justin Lockey. “To be honest its getting a bit boring seeing the same bleak sea of sad faces staring at something moody and slightly provocative in music videos. It turns out we don’t have to film that! We only have to look at actual real life in 2016 to see that we’re all fucking doomed. Climate change, a Prime Minister finding 30k in tax free change down the back of his sofa in the Bahamas, an actual racist of the highest order of fuckwittery running for the Presidency in America the land of the free, Leicester City at the top of the premier league… This list of erroneous things that are fucked in 2016 could go on forever and is probably already a Buzzfeed article… So we thought we’d just make a video grounded in the reality of what most people do everyday, and that’s look at videos of cats on the internet.
“We would have made something else, but it wouldn’t have been a gritty reboot and / or part of the marvel cinematic universe so nobody would have given a fuck anyway.”
Sonically it’s a surging guitar pop tune with twinned boy-girl vocals that pull towards a chorus that implores: “Tell me what it’s all about!” The eternal question, and posed so well.
Minor Victories Tour Dates
6/19/16 Washington, DC @ Rock & Roll Hotel
6/20/16 Cambridge, MA @ The Sinclair
6/21/16 Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
6/22/16 Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer
6/24/16 Toronto, ON @ The Opera House
6/25/16 Columbus, OH @ The A&R Bar
6/26/16 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
6/28/16 San Francisco, CA @ The Independent
6/29/16 Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom
Minor Victories will be released on 6.3 via Fat Possum Records.
