Los Angeles-based musician John Errol refers to his latest single “Sometimes” as a “panic attack on a loop.” Over jittery drums and cranky, soaring loops, Errol reflects on the instability of feelings and impulsive thoughts. It’s that instability that’s simultaneously terrifying, reassuring, and, finally, hopeful. Thoughts, the free-floating enigmas of our cranium, are chaotic but impermanent and susceptible to change. For “Sometimes,” thoughts of killing a man shift to feelings of inadequacy in the viscous, noisy distortion.
His third single to be released in four years, preparing for his debut album Inferno, “Sometimes” peels back another layer of Errol’s experimental prog-pop sound with intense vulnerability. His influences span from Britney Spears to David Bowie to Nine Inch Nails, but his latest track feels like a meeting of the minds between Suicide’s Alan Vega and Sufjan Stevens. “It’s a collection of some very personal thoughts,” Errol says, “that tend to get stuck on loop in my head. I wanted the music to mimic the cyclical nature of this kind of interior dialogue. The message is clear and immediate: Sometimes I feel good, other times I don’t. Sometimes I feel like ending my life. But sometimes I feel like celebrating it.”
The track’s video, which was directed by Adinah Dancyger, finds Errol shirtless with his back to the the camera. The full spectrum of colors flashes on screen before him as he curls into himself. “The screen motif alludes to the trappings of social media and the endless comparisons to others that I feel like we all fall victim to, in a way. Endlessly starring at a screen, transfixed, caged, and mesmerized by it. It’s like living in a beautiful, overwhelming, sensorial visual prison,” he says.
His debut album Inferno is coming out at the end of May on Flexible Distribution/Terrible Records. In the meantime, check out “Sometimes” below.
