Among the 10 tracks on Scarves’ new album Strays Forever, you’re unlikely to find a conventional love song. That isn’t because affection isn’t coursing through the Seattle-based outfit’s latest Chris Walla–produced record, but because frontman Niko Stathakopolous has a knack for framing these feelings in highly unconventional ways. “Chainsaw,” for example, takes its title from the name of Tobe Hooper’s slasher classic as Stathakopolous recounts the type of love that makes you want to “squeeze” your partner “until they pop open like a tube of toothpaste.” Or “Self Soothing,” a song that places a missed love one in Schrödinger’s Box.
It’s these two songs that Stathakopolous opted to play for a “Neighborhoods” set he filmed in Bellingham, Washington. Set up along with keyboardist Extrawilliam in a friend’s P-Patch (a garden, for all you non-PNWers), he strums through both tracks in a location that’s close to his heart. “Bellingham is home of my alma mater, Western Washington University, and also some of the best people in this whole wide world,” he shares. “Thankfully for me, a lot of those people are also film nerds with cool gardens. We filmed in a local P-Patch maintained by our director Ben Owens’ partner Erika. It seemed a fitting setting for a song about pirouetting against a sunset, chainsaw or not.”
Check out the video below, and listen to Strays Forever via Tender Loving Empire here.
