Indie rock group the Vivian Girls have released a new video for “Sludge,” which is directed by Alex Ross Perry, who has worked with Her Smell and Listen Up Philip. This video was shot in the San Fernando Valley by Los Angeles, and shows the trio navigating through the isolated parts of the valley. This latest video was made in support of their forthcoming album Memory, which is the group’s first studio album in nearly 8 years.
During the opening of “”Sludge,” band members are seen walking through an isolated part of the valley, before encountering an old television and VHS tape which is then inserted into the VCR that is a part of the television. The track sounds nostalgic, channeling different types of sounds from shoegaze to grunge sounds.
“I just counted: there are four different photos of Vivian Girls in the look book I made for Her Smell. So if you had told me when I was first seeing them at Death By Audio (or was it Union Pool?) in 2008 (or was it late 2007?) that over a decade later, we’d be collaborating on a music video, I would have been alarmed at the specificity of this prophecy,” Perry explained in a press release. “The notion was to invent a video for ‘Sludge’ that honored The Valley, toying with suburban nothingness and alienation, honoring filming locations from E.T. that are still emanating traces of decades-old magic. To explore the dichotomy of light and dark, mortal and immortal, self and self. Of then and now…”