Winnipeg’s Living Hour have recorded four albums over the course of their 10 years together as a band, with each one taking a different textural approach to dream pop. While their self-titled debut from 2016 feels grounded in the hazy summer heat, for example, their latest record Internal Drone Infinity adopts a distinctly detached view of the world—whether it be viewed from a screen or some 40,000 feet above the earth. “I wrote a lot of the songs while working as a projectionist at a movie theater and on airplanes,” band leader Sam Sarty shares of the heavily collaborative record. “Both places have a little window you look out of to see things move while you sit down. It’s a strange feeling to be completely still while watching the rest of the world moving in a frame.”
The latest single from the record falls in line with this sense of detachment, with the heavily shoegaze-y “Best I Did It” seeing Sarty observing herself from a new perspective. “I wanted to try to push the visceral feeling of not being in your body,” she explains of the track, which occasionally brings to mind Wednesday at their grungiest and least twangy. “I wrote the chorus to remind myself that sinister perfectionism doesn’t help, that trying to be well is just another path to somewhere—[you] don’t have to get it exactly right. It’s almost like a mini joke to myself to lighten the feeling. What if what I’m doing is the best I did it, that there’s no exact way to get better?
“I’m excited for future versions of myself to sing this and be in a different headspace,” she adds, “and have the song as an option of release, too.”
Check out the video for “Best I Did It” below, and pre-order Internal Drone Infinity ahead of its October 17 release here.
