Club Majo has a lot of fun with her green-screen in the “Here We Go” video

Club Majo premieres the psychedelic video for her debut single “Here We Go”.

Enya Lake, the artist behind Club Majo, lives next to a pond in California, in a tiny green house, where she writes music on her keyboard, Dave. Her debut single, “Here We Go,” is bedroom pop with enough pep and emotional sincerity to make you bounce on your bed or smoke a regretful cigarette in your neighborhood pocket-park.

“Here We Go” is about Mercury in retrograde – one of the more unfortunate astrological alignments. As Lake puts it, “Mercury is the planet said to rule communication; when in retrograde you can expect frequent misunderstandings, scheduling problems and disagreements with friends” – all the stupid and apparently unavoidable frustrations that acompany social life. For example, with Mercury in retrograde, your friends might show up at your house uninvited; you might find yourself talking to some stranger who’s “empty as a tin can;” You might be struck horribly by the spotlight of group attention – “people stare/While I’m spilling your glass of wine.” Club Majo deals with all of this and more on “Here We Go.” Lake sums it all up wonderfully in the song’s opening lines – “Well I locked the keys in the car/So I closed my eyes and thought about/All the times I like to get away/Maybe live on Mars but that’s stupid I know.”

The song’s main groove is built on bubbly bouncing bass, punchy programmed drums, and a fabulously retro synth-brass lick. It sounds like the most endearing grin you’ve ever seen – the sonic equivalent of Michael Cerra giving you a hug – so when it falls away for a moment and leaves Lake‘s vocals echoing in an abruptly empty space, you find yourself caught unawares. All at once, the song is shockingly lonely.

This loneliness is the core of “Here We Go.” Lake “will smile at all your jokes,” and “try to care,” because she’s longing for connection. This is the terrible consequence of the moronic, constant frustrations of miscommunication – they keep us from really knowing each other. Lake sings, in a straight forward, brutal assessment of this loneliness, “If it felt so right then what’s the matter with me/Yeah what’s the matter/I just wanna feel something.”

In the song’s accompanying music video, premiering today on HighClouds, Club Majo takes a journey around the world of lofi green-screen. It’s fabulously 80s – retro sci-fi animations, bright yellow subtitles, a genuine keytar sighting. It’s honestly the spiritual heir of Talking Heads‘ incredible 1980 “Once in a Lifetime” video, but in the back half, it all gets a bit too psychedelic. The colors all flip to negative, the edits fly at you like a spark plug, and all the fun pep of the video accelerates rapidly towards anxiety. This does a great job capturing the song’s surprisingly jagged emotional edge. The bop and bounce might draw you to Club Majo‘s music, but it’s this edge that will bring your back for more.

Lukas

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