Before releasing their latest LP SUP at the end of next month and hitting the road in support of the record alongside Prince Daddy & the Hyena, Sincere Engineer, and Hot Mulligan, Super American intend to kill their ego—a job they may have made harder than it needs to be by personifying it with the human name “Jeff.” This is the subject of their latest single from the project, “RIP JEFF,” immediately characterized by acoustic guitars tuned to the key of pop-punk and record scratches that would feel just a bit anachronistic if the duo’s prior single wasn’t paired with a visual clearly inspired by Cruis’n USA, letting on just what era of nostalgia Matt Cox and Patrick Feeley like to pull from.
According to Feeley, the new single is “an exercise in wanting to be a better, happier person while having innumerable thoughts clashing into each other simultaneously from every direction in your brain at all hours of the day and then looking around and realizing most people are probably not thinking about any single thing at all and wishing you could do the same.” This cripplingly introspective angle is well documented in the track’s music video, which sees the pair wandering around an apartment wordily contemplating maybe not drinking an entire bottle of wine before bed in the future. “I pictured it almost as a side rant, follow-up chapter, or sequel to ‘how big is your brain?’—acknowledging the endless pitfalls of spending too much time in your head, trying to internalize and learn from all the time spent trying to control everything and everyone. I’m trying to kill the part of me that does this so I can let the universe do its thing.”
“You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg,” Cox adds. “‘JEFF’ feels unique in the context of SUP as it serves as a necessary moment of reflection within what feels like one big, chaotic moment.”
Watch this moment of reflection unfold below.
