Surprises, the solo project of Brooks Paschal, frontman of beloved 00’s emo group Sullivan, is debuting a new video for the track “I Can’t See You Em.”
The clip incorporates clips from campy old horror movies, and is premiering on popular Horror site Dread Central.
Watch “I Can’t See You Em” here
Brooks tells Dread Central: “My main objective was to capture the inescapability of anxiety. I knew that I didn’t want to make a traditional music video in that the performance had to be part of the landscape. I wanted the viewer/listener to feel that I was trapped in whatever space I was in. I had the idea of using the old footage while watching Kingdom of the Spiders. There was something that was authentic and completely unrepeatable about it. A director buddy of mine pointed me to archive.org. I watched hours of footage to find the moments that really sold the recklessness of the song. The one thing I noticed looking back was the commonality of the shots I chose despite the different decades of the footage. There was a cohesion that made me believe in the song more and hopefully will give folks another reason to listen/watch.”
‘Natural Disaster’ is now available here
“The core philosophy of Surprises is: no rules,” Paschal says. “While writing, I’ve never thought to myself, ‘kids won’t like this,’ or ‘people’ will love this.’ In fact, if I do, I stop. If I sit down and try, it’s not going to come out right.”
With instincts driving all direction, Surprises has taken Paschal into personally unchartered territory as a songwriter. Where conceptually all lyrical material for Sullivan was purely fictional storytelling, Surprises delves heavily into Paschal’s personal experiences. “I’ve never tried to write about anything,” he says, “but I noticed as I sat down, a lot of me was coming out, and I experienced the catharsis that I have always heard other songwriters talk about.”
For the release of the debut LP, Surprises will partner with longtime collaborators, Spartan Records. “There was never a thought of releasing this album with anyone else,” says Paschal. “John Frazier (Spartan Records Owner/CEO) is a gut guy who likes what he likes and the other industry factors have to sit in the back seat. That is exactly what Surprises is to me, so the match is perfect.”
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