Tomorrow we’ll be blessed with a third installment of tunes from Matt Berry’s The Berries project: a singles and B-sides comp entitled Throne of Ivory, compiling tracks recorded in 2020 as well as Berryland outtakes that were originally destined for a more conventional third LP. With half the record already available to hear, Berry’s offering up one more single ahead of release day with the melancholy, minimal “Palace of Fools”—a track which, according to Berry, “tackles themes of delusion and self-awareness, collaging images of different characters caught up in misguided yet comforting fantasies”—along with a dramatic short film to accompany it.
Director Gary Canino sets the scene for the nearly soap-operatic domestic drama full of deceit, car washes, and fatal heart conditions. “The video for ‘Palace of Fools’ was a sort of reimagining of The Gift of the Magi,” Canino shares. “It features a doomed couple who go to a car wash to cleanse their souls, but emerge from the other side even dirtier than before. Robert Forster’s eternal [Jackie Brown] character Max Cherry was also an influence.”
Watch the clip below, and pre-order Throne of Ivory via RFC here.
