Last March, Blair Gun released their debut album Blaspheme Queen, which explicitly leaned into various corners of alt-rock established and perfected in the 1990s. I suppose in the 15 months between March 2023 and the release of their newly unveiled follow-up, There Are No Rival Clones Here, the band must have realized that the entire landscape of contemporary rock music seems to be informed by that same era, with shoegaze and lo-fi bedroom-pop dominating airwaves and playlists alike. Naturally, this led to a bit of temporal reflection on this new record—on tracks riffing on band names from the late-’80s/early-’90s and beyond.
“‘Beat Happened’ was a very reflective song for us,” the band shares of the album cut. “We have a lot of experiences being labeled and moving in circles with bands that are all considered ‘post’-something or a revival movement. The song attempts to reflect on our conflicting feelings of reverence and progression. Musical movements may never die nowadays because of the modern landscape of rock, but we want to escape the romanticized ideas of iconic scenes, pretending as if we are coming up in 2000s Brooklyn or 1980s DC. It would be amazing to imagine ourselves coming up in such an important time and place as these highly revered scenes, but pining for what once was has rarely ever created exciting, new ideas.”
Today, the band is sharing a video for the track that feels reverential of the MTV era without being explicitly nostalgic for it. Bands being filmed playing their songs in an empty room is a pretty timeless concept, after all. Check out the Alyssa Kuhl–directed clip below, find more about Blair Gun here.
