Skeletons’s Matt Mehlan released his most recent album, Am I Home?, back in April. He enlisted the help of a panoply of New York experimentalists—including Liturgy drummer Greg Fox and Justin Frye of PC Worship—but the resulting collection feels more cohesive and collected than those names might suggest. Single “Success” is a delicately unfolding mélange of heady vibraphone, free-jazz drumming, and acoustic flutter that’s united seemingly by the force of Mehlan’s artistic will. It’s nostalgic and earnest, and deeply midwestern—Mehlan began the Skeletons project while at Oberlin—but it’s also highly sophisticated, cosmopolitan and cosmic at once.
Mehlan directed the video himself, culling clips from a tape of his grandparents’ wedding. “I moved back to Chicagoland a year and a half ago,” he says. “Within a year of being back in the place I grew up, both of my dad’s parents passed. Going through their house he found a VHS labelled ‘Mehlan 10.29.49.’ It was a copy of their wedding film, an 8 mm transfer. My grandparents were married for over sixty years. That’s a special kind of success I have an evolving understanding of. I thought it might be OK to bring the song to this footage, in acknowledgment of them.”
The video is a perfect complement to the song, a paradox of feeling. Its intimacy feels warm and true, but the darkly lit scenes and the washy 8 mm disconnect it from our present reality. It’s partly uncomfortable, and partly exactly where you want to be. Check it out below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK48q-13S2A
Am I Home is out now via Shinkoyo in the US and Altin Village & Mine in the EU.
