My Son the Doctor delivered their second-born collection of songs three years ago—nearly to the day—with Taste Those Dreams building upon the post-punky swagger established on 2020’s Dad Time EP. With little new material in the interim, the quartet recently announced their signing to Trash Casual Records, with their debut single for the label arriving this Friday and a single release show set for Union Pool to follow next week. In the meantime, we’re getting a sneak peek at new single “Barry Bonds” alongside a (backup) music video created by the band’s Joel Kalow.
“Our music video for this song was shot on a DV camera that we took with us on a recent tour, consisting mostly of riveting footage of the Best Western near St. Lawrence University,” the band explains. “We found it hilarious, but fate would have it that we couldn’t get our hands on the half dozen necessary cables to transfer DV tape to Macbook for editing. Cue the public domain footage.”
The video instead takes the form of a collage of mid-century instructional videos touching on everything from puberty to baseball to perversion—all topics explored on “Barry Bonds.” “We downloaded four hours of film from Prelinger Archives, serendipitously located in San Francisco (home turf of the eponym himself),” the band continues. “Fortuitous still was the fact that we had a four-hour drive to a show in Binghamton, which guitarist Joel diligently spent editing this masterpiece while the rest of us listened to Can. Sheep, The Hindenburg, Men bowling in plaid…there's something for everyone in these four minutes of fun.”
The song itself steers the fun, with some Malkmus-esque slacker-rock vocals getting irreverently animated amidst heavy riffs and cocksure lyrics bringing Pinkerton-era Weezer to mind. Well, cocksure on the surface, at least. “What’s this song about? It’s about insecurity,” the band admits. “It’s about looking into the mirror and wanting to be someone bigger than you are. But you aren’t that person. That person is Barry Bonds. To three short Jewish boys from Northern California and our tall (and oh-so-tender) New York native drummer, Barry Bonds epitomizes all that we look in the mirror and don’t see: muscle, masculinity, and fame in exploding excess.”
“Barry Bonds” officially lands on streaming this Friday, but you can check it out below via its music video and pre-save the single here. Additionally, you can find tickets to My Son the Doctor’s upcoming shows next week and next month at Union Pool and TV Eye, respectively, here.
