Pines – Kings: Video Premiere

Watch the video for Kings, the new track from Salford band Pines

Video by Music Team | 06 Feb 2017

Pines may cite an eclectic bundle of influences, ranging from Scott Walker to Gang Starr to The Verve, but their sound is a thoroughly modern take on psychedelic pop. The songs ain't bad either, as latest cut Kings demonstrates: a mesh of synths and reverb-washed melody, with a certain Duane Eddy twang to their interwoven guitar, it's a soaring piece of melancholia that's neatly in touch with their Greater Manchester origins while simultaneously pushing beyond them entirely.

The song itself, in their own words, concerns "modernity, modality, aspiration and permanence," as does the triptych, morphing collage of Charles Leek's accompanying video, which takes inspiration from the work of Cyprien Guillard, Berenice Abbott and David Carson.

"Kings is our lament to modernity," Pines explain. "The era of the subculture has dissipated and been replaced with a cultural hegemony that has fathers and sons dressing alike, sharing similar taste in music and having the same fucking haircut. This is the first point in history where that's ever happened and it scares the shit out of us. It's the manifestation of all of these things and how that proliferates the world that we exist in as artists.

"It's also in part an attack on 'hipsterdom'. Of a lack of substance. As a society we're becoming more and more concerned with outward appearance and less about anything substantive or reflective. We exist in echo chambers, curating our own content and simply ignoring anything we don't agree with. We're passive. I don't think it's our job to exist in a world we don't feel comfortable in and do so quietly. We're not here to watch empty shirts who look like Topman models make generic, on-trend banality and we're certainly not making music for anybody who does. We're here to give people an alternative. Kings is our love song to those that already know."

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