Today on “things you can’t believe you miss during a pandemic,” The Rare Occasions present: The agony of fetching friends and family from the airport.
The Providence-gone-Los Angeles group gives a campy makeover to one of life’s most obnoxious chores on their new tune “Call Me When You Get There,” released last week (May 7). The single and video arrive a month ahead of the band’s forthcoming sophomore album Big Whoop, due out June 18.
Moved by the passive cynicism that’s (justifiably) dominating rock music of late, The Rare Occasions felt propelled in the opposite creative direction for their newest work. “Call Me When You Get There” paints airport runs as a frenetic kind of fun, but more importantly, something to weirdly look forward to after 13 months of quarantining. What could have been fertile ground for snarky satire instead gives way to jaunty harmonies and earnest eagerness to jet to your loved ones.
“We were feeling like a lot of the music coming from our genre focuses on radiating a certain coolness to the point that it neglects the fun aspect of the music,” the band explains. “So this is us doing the opposite, playing a song that makes us laugh, singing three-part harmonies and just having fun with it.”
Adds music video director Kenneth Bauer: “I really loved the moodiness we captured from the previous music video, ‘Stay,’ but I wanted this one to be a complete shift in the opposite direction. With vibrant colors, Brady Bunch-inspired telephone editing, and cartoonish animations, I think we definitely achieved that, giving everyone a sense of who The Rare Occasions really are — a group of super talented musicians that aren’t afraid to joke around and have fun.”
After all, today’s definition of snide “coolness” isn’t futureproof; a tongue-in-cheek sense of adventure is. Take off with The Rare Occasions below.
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