I’ve spent more time than usual this week sending and receiving texts from friends across the U.S. and Canada about how unbearably hot it is, which makes the news of a new album from Toronto’s Casper Skulls all the more pleasant. The icy guitars, placid soundscapes, and lyrics anticipating winter central to the band’s new track “Thesis,” the first from the forthcoming release Know No Kindness, are served up with a video co-directed by vocalist/guitarist Melanie St-Pierre which matches these elements.
The song, however, is more specifically rooted in the memory of a teacher St-Pierre remembers from her teenage years who encouraged her creative side more than most—a familiar archetype to most artists who spent those years butting heads with authority figures. “In high school, I used to write really chaotic essays for my classes,” she explains. “I didn’t really follow the structure well because I had too many thoughts about whatever topic was handed to us. The only teacher that got a kick out of this was one of my English teachers, Mr. Dodds. One time he jokingly asked if he was going to receive the abridged thesis. That always stayed with me.
“Finally, I found myself feeling much more suited to poetry and creative paragraph writing when I was 18, which ultimately bred my songwriting. My introduction into this world was an accidental reading of a Robert Frost poem about seven years earlier. A recurring theme I latched onto was his depictions of a rural winter. I grew up in similar surroundings which really inspires a lot of my creative work, and for that reason, I thrive artistically in the winter. I owe a lot to Mr. Dodds for allowing me to do my thing and find my own creative voice. This song is dedicated to the structurally incapable but artistically driven, and is the album’s abridged thesis.”
Watch the video—directed by St-Pierre, Paul Los, and Nora Burns, with animation by Gaia Alari—below.
