On Preoccupations upcoming new album, New Material, the label of post-punk gets redefined for the Calgary band. There are moments of warmth and beauty that hadn’t previously been present for the group, even as the subject matter and songwriting pushes inward to some troubling places.
On latest single “Disarray,” this dichotomy is on display, with a woozy, almost romantic melody juxtaposing lyrics of mental fatigue. For its video, director Ruff Mercy takes this to a symbolic place, using footage of Flegal walking on the beach and animating over it to show the singer’s inner turmoil.
Songwriter Matt Flegel had this to say about the composition:
“When I was writing “Disarray”, it started off with an image of a mother combing her daughter’s hair that came into my mind, I liked the metaphor of splitting the braids and combing through the tangles, and wrote the rest of the lyrics around that image. This song sat untouched for close to 6 months as a recording with just bass and drums before we came back to it and wrote and recorded the guitar line while out of our minds one night in the early AM.”
Check out Preoccupations’ “Disarray” video above, and look for New Material out on March 23 via Jagjaguwar.
