“Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older?” The Beach Boys once sang. But after a certain age, to paraphrase Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender,” we all become ready to grow young again. It’s this latter sentiment that drives the track “Running Strange” from Nighttime Flyers. An instrumental project comprised of Gracer’s Ryan Mahon and Against Me!’s Andrew Seward, the pair released their self-titled debut record in 2022, and a couple of months ago digitally released a four-track EP titled Running (Strange), with a physical version to follow soon.
Arriving today is the video for this title track, which captures the innocence and wonder of youth as much as the song itself does. Energetic and nostalgic in equal measure, “Running Strange” possesses the same kind of magic of early Cure songs—which is to say that even without vocals it has the ability to simultaneously break and heal your heart and bring years of forgotten memories—good and bad—flooding back into your heart and mind. And while videos so often seem completely detached from the songs they’re meant to represent, this one actually makes an already-wonderful song even better.
“The video for ‘Running Strange’ comes from a single word: ‘youth,’” says Seward. “No script, no concept boards, just a vibe. Directors Michael LeGrand and Johney Birrell took that and ran with it. Two kids. A car. Ice cream. That stretch of adolescence where music is the only thing that makes sense, so you turn it up and drive around like it’s going to save you. Maybe it will. Or maybe it just passes the time until everything else catches up.”
Ouch. Watch and listen below, and pre-order a physical copy of Running (Strange) here.
