Girlpool have fun, but they don't mess around. The lo-fi punk duo spend the duration of their new video, for the title track from their debut LP, Before The World Was Big, cartwheeling and frolicking on a sun-drenched beach. Cares are few, trust falls are many, and a boardwalk Ferris wheel spins majestically over all.
Delivered in Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker's trademark no-frills vocals, though, the lyrics tell a different story. Singing about "trying not to think of all the ways / this place has changed," coming from a couple of decamped Californians, turns a sunny day on the boardwalk into something downright bittersweet. This video was shot on Coney Island, closer to Girlpool's new home of Philadelphia than its old home of Los Angeles, but the crackling vintage film on which it was shot lends a nostalgic air to every giddy skip the pair take through the sand.
Girlpool tell it too straight to give in entirely to melancholy, though; their voices are pure and raw, and their instruments are simple and buoyant. When Tividad and Tucker harmonize on the word "trillion" in the first few lines, they could be singing the saddest words in the world, and they'd still sound like a beam of pure light. And that's what makes this video hit so hard. It's longing, it's memory, it's nostalgia, it's homesickness. And, at the same time, it's dear friends having their day in the sun, wherever they go.
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