American Babies | Photo by Skylar Carfi | courtesy of the artist
PREMIERE: American Babies debut trippy new music video for “Fever Dreams”
With American Babies’ recently released fourth effort entitled An Epic Battle Between Light and Dark, it comes as no surprise that the Philly psych-rockers would experiment with imagery that comes from the dichotomy of good and evil.
Released today, the band’s latest music video for its single “Fever Dreams” is an animated whirlwind of vibrant colors and distorted characters fit for an actual feverish hallucination.
The video opens as cartoon frontman Tom Hamilton is losing his grip, literally and figuratively, on the side of a cliff and falls endlessly into a cavernous pit. The video is full of anxious nightmare narratives like this one, such as losing teeth and being naked in front of your peers. Seemingly innocent details like the clinking of ice cubes in Hamilton’s glass of whiskey transform into the quivering tail of a rattlesnake as we watch him disassociate with reality.
At one point, strobes of neon colors flash on screen as Hamilton is chased by a giant, bipedal fish. This sequence of running from his demons reoccurs later on, this time by a never-ending line of creatures in red suits. At times disorienting and others dreamy, this fantastical world isn’t all that far-fetched. The video’s characters perfectly personify feelings of unease and despair, along with the fragile bridge between sanity and a lack thereof.
Created by Josh Clark, guitarist of Tea Leaf Green, Hamilton gave him ultimate creative freedom with this project, no matter how twisted it became. “The overall vibe for this record is to dig into those dark places that we don’t like to acknowledge, and I wanted his creative process to have mirrored mine,” Hamilton wrote to The Key. “The moment when your inner filter starts to twitch a bit, that’s when you know you’re on to something. I found the video to be weird, at times scary, and even profound.”
American Babies are playing two upcoming shows in Philadelphia this spring, first at Kula United Yoga Festival at Drexel Park on May 1st, then the Ardmore Music Hall on May 20th. You can find tickets and more information at the XPN Concert Calendar and can check out the music video below.