For the first of this exclusive three-part series, FLOOD has teamed up with LA’s own Wallows, one of the city’s most intriguing new bands that’s on the verge of breaking out in a major way. We’re checking in with the guys every week or so between now and the release of their debut album at the end of March. Hop on board now before they’re an “overnight sensation” and headlining huge shows around the world.
Relationships are hard.
Wallows are just as aware of this fact as the rest of us, and the band has eloquently captured that sinking feeling of a relationship going south on the Clairo-featuring “Are You Bored Yet?” It’s the lead single from the group’s highly anticipated debut album, Nothing Happens, slated for release on March 22 via Atlantic Records.
While the song wraps its melancholy sentiment inside a catchy melody, the karaoke-themed music video takes viewers deep inside the lyrical meaning.
“We had some people over one night, and a friend spilled wine all over my computer,” Cole Preston explained about the song’s genesis during a recent phone call. The wine mishap ended the machine, taking a trove of new songs with it. “So I had to get a new computer, and one of the first ideas I put into it was this song. It was actually liberating to work from a totally clean slate. From that, we all sort of came together to finish it.”
In regards to “Are You Bored Yet?” being the first single, the band agrees that it was the song that got the most immediate response from their latest batch.
“There’s a lot of different elements from the album in that song,” offered Preston. “The record goes a lot of places that track doesn’t. ‘Are You Bored Yet’ is a nice, digestible, easy-to-listen-to, and relatable song in comparison to a lot of the other songs on the album. Lyrically, a lot of them are in a darker place and more vague in the narration. It’s a nice way to introduce the album to the world.”
Digging deeper into the track’s lyrical content, Minnette said that it’s from the perspective of someone in a relationship who can see that it’s coming to a definite end.
“We were working on the demo, and I was just singing gibberish over it. There was a line in the chorus that sounded to me like ‘are you bored yet?’ It struck me as a really cool line and song title. So I wrote the rest of the lyrics around that title, and it just all started to make sense.
RELATED: Wallows Announce Debut Album with Lead Single “Are You Bored Yet? (feat. Clairo)”
“For Claire [Cottrill]’s part, she came in and wrote at the studio,” he added in regards to the artist Clairo, who collaborated on the track. “I look at her part as the other person, the other side of the relationship in the second verse. That point of view is way more optimistic: ‘This can work out. We can get through this undefeated.’ But the narrator of the song is too far gone.”
“It’s a nice, digestible, easy-to-listen-to, relatable song in comparison to a lot of the other songs on the album.”
To deliver the song visually, Wallows crafted a video that’s set in a karaoke bar, where Minnette gets in front of a small crowd to bear his soul that’s also bared in the lyrics. As the song progresses, the crowd catches the vibe and sings along to the sad tune. The clip ends on a surrealistic twist, when it’s revealed that the whole scenario was happening in the singer’s head. When it’s time to take the stage in real life, he picks “Scrawny,” the second single from Nothing Happens, instead.
In order to bring the video to life, the band decamped to a dive bar somewhere in Burbank, CA, on a rare rainy day with a group of friends.
“It all came together really quickly. We invited anyone and everyone that we thought would be cool in it. I guess we ended up inviting too many people, because the fire marshal said there were too many names on the list. So we had to uninvite people. We lost some Facebook friends over it for sure,” laughed guitarist/singer Braeden Lemasters. “It was just one big party. Everyone knew each other. It really made it easy.”
Get a behind-the-scenes look at Wallows making “Are We Bored Yet?” below. FL
