A few years ago, one of the plagues of online music journalism was the un-Googleable band name. The Music, Men, Girls, Weekend, and others all wreaked havoc on basic searches, forcing us to frantically add things like “band” and “music” and their hometown to any queries. Today, it seems, the hell has transferred to the un-taggable. Every time we spin a track from The I Want You on VanyaRadio and attempt to tag the band in our daily show previews on Facebook, a slew of religious, romance, and self-help pages appear, even though the Boston pop-rock band’s url is simply /theiwantyou.
None of this has absolutely anything to do with the I Want You’s new music video for “Coast”, the title track off their upcoming EP that gets the release party treatment this Saturday at Firebrand Saints in Cambridge. The video, which we are proud to premiere today on Vanyaland, was created by the I Want You singer/bassist Jim Gerdeman, who also wrote the track. [Full disclosure: The I Want You guitarist/keyboardist Jonathan Donaldson is also a contributor to this website.]
Says Gerdeman about the video, which you can watch below: “I was skateboarding through my old neighborhood in Florida and thought about my teenage self. And although so much has changed down there and all my friends are gone, I feel like the exact same person I was at 17. Summer always brings back memories of times gone by for me and skateboarding is so meditative anyway. The concept of coasting and time and separation and ghosts seemed to all fit together.”
The video for “Coast” was shot primarily on an iPhone around Florida’s Pompano Beach and Coral Springs, as well as select scenes in Mansfield, Massachusetts.
“No selfie stick was used,” Gerdeman adds. “Just my cat-like balance and general recklessness.”
