Photo credit: Steven Cohen
Alt-rock legends Semisonic (1998’s ‘Feeling Strangely Fine’ is a phenomenal album) have shared the video for ‘You’re Not Alone’ – the Minneapolis trio’s first new material in almost 20 years. The song will feature on the forthcoming EP of the same name (out via Pleasuresonic Recordings and Megaforce Records on 18 September).
The video was recorded by fellow Minneapolis resident Phil Harder, a director who’s worked with Prince and Nada Surf in the past. Semisonic frontman and songwriter Dan Wilson says the aim was to conjure up feelings of nostalgia: ‘We began with memories of childhood in the woods. Filmmaker Phil Harder creates a fable of the woods, city, a distant beach, and a young boy who places a message in a bottle and sends it on a long journey. Inspired party by Richard Powers’ devastatingly beautiful novel ‘The Overstory’, partly by the paints of Tomas Sanchez (one of which is featured on the sleeve of the single), and partly by the profound isolation we are experiencing during the pandemic, the video reflects the hopeful message of the song.”
The song itself recalls the band’s biggest hits from yesteryear with anthemic guitar hooks, bar-room piano and bittersweet and self-referencing yet ultimately positive lyrics: ‘Everybody knows that the world is wrong. Only thing to do is write a song, that’s one way to take a wrong and make it alright’. There’s a reassurance all the way through that ‘No one ever told you life was long’ alongside more far-reaching musings on the concept of life: ‘Sometimes the complexity gets a little complex Other times it’s easy as baking a pie Falling off a log and living till you die What would even be the point if we knew what comes next?’
