It’s often said that time waits for no man or woman, and that’s especially true for those who play in rock bands. The idea that creativity fades away and youthful abandon gives way to responsibility and the bore of adult life is partly a theme in Gladiola’s excellent new album This Year’s Storm. Though instead of wallowing in what-ifs and how life used to be, the Boston rock band has tried to make sense of it all, and to celebrate tomorrow’s LP release, Vanyaland is excited to premiere the video for the album’s standout track, “We’re Never Going Back”.
Directed by Pete Septoff, the clip shows a young couple who over time has allowed life to set its own course.
“A lot of the big ideas on the record are laid out here: Growing older with someone, making sense of the past, the role that creativity plays in an adult life, and the tension between acceptance and reaching for something else,” frontman Bill Madden-Fuoco tells Vanyaland.
“We’re Never Going Back” — which was mixed by Mitch Easter [R.E.M., Wilco, Pavement], who last year filled in on the song for Gladiola’s longtime studio man Dave Minehan while he was out touring with the Replacements — is an infectious track that adds to the theme of lost youth; it musically recalls the long-gone halcyon days of ’80s college rock.
“It reminds Chris [Regalia, bassist] of Uncle Tupelo,” Madden-Fuoco adds, “but I was going for a concise, poppy, angry, jangly, rocker in the vein of The Plimsouls ‘A Million Miles Away’ or Springsteen’s ‘Jackson Cage.'”
Watch the “We’re Never Going Back” video below, and catch Gladiola playing a stripped down set at Jamaica Plain’s UForge Gallery on February 20.