Dinosaur Jr. have just released new single Garden, the second track taken from Sweep It Into Space, their soon-to-be-released album coming April 23 via Jagjaguwar.
The new single is accompanied by a deceptively simple video that features the band hanging out together in snowy weather, while animations by Chloe Hemingway and illustrations courtesy of John Moloney swirl around them. On the face of it, it seems like a pretty ordinary scene – trippy visuals aside – and is even filmed through an iPhone camera. But Garden is designed to be the antidote to troubling times, and is in fact a gentle reminder to take a step back from the chaos of life's complexities.
Bassist /vocalist Lou Barlow explains: “Everyone seemed to want a disruption in the order of American life, it seemed necessary. Then it happened. [This song] began as a bitter lamentation but as I was finishing the lyrics, singing over the instrumental version of the song while driving to J’s through the miles of farmland that separate his studio in Amherst and my home in Greenfield (Massachusetts), I saw a sign on a shed: Back to the Garden. I was looking for a resolution, where do we go when faced with such dramatic confusion? Back to basics, back home, back to the garden.”
Explaining the low-key video, he continues: “There wasn’t a video planned for the song but since my wife Adelle and I had started making holiday ‘specials’ for my YouTube channel this past December, we thought we could knock one out for Garden.
“Adelle thought we should incorporate the whimsical paintings of Dinosaur Jr’s tour manager John Moloney. He routinely dashes off caricatures of J, Murph and I when we travel. I told John about our ideas and he thought it would be easy to video the band playing the song.”
“So, John and Adelle quickly captured the band playing the song on their iPhones on a cold February afternoon and I edited it all together in iMovie. Then we had Chloe, the real vid expert at Jagjaguwar, put the paintings by John and Adelle into the mix, and that’s it!”
Dinosaur Jr. will also be playing a livestream performance on May 1. Tickets are available now.
Watch the video below:
Dinosaur Jr - Sweep It Into Space tracklist:
1. I Ain't
2. I Met the Stones
3. To Be Waiting
4. I Ran Away
5. Garden
6. Hide Another Round
7. And Me
8. I Expect It Always
9. Take It Back
10. N Say
11. Walking To You
12. You Wonder
