Last year handed Vundabar’s Brandon Hagen a “crisis within a crisis.”
Like most folks in 2020, the longtime Boston singer and guitarist felt like his world was too quiet, hushed overnight from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, during quarantine, his father suffered a stroke that resulted in global aphasia. Suddenly, his world was even quieter.
As Hagen witnessed his father lose the ability to express or understand speech, he poured that inexplicable pain into Vundabar’s new song “Aphasia,” released today (May 18).
The track also comes with a new b-side called “Ringing Bell,” as well a slew of performances scheduled for the fall. Their U.S. tour starts on the West Coast in late September, and wraps up in Boston at The Paradise Rock Club on November 27.
“The song originated as being about having difficulty describing the world and yourself, and then my pop’s stroke happened and it felt uncanny and fated,” Hagen says of “Aphasia.”
Yet even in the face of tragedy, Vundabar sneaks in smiles through the song’s accompanying music video. “Aphasia” comes steeped in sobering melodies, but the band’s new visual offers a wholesome plot about the unbreakable bond of friendship amongst — wait for it — vampires.
“My sister is a producer/director, her boyfriend is a cinematographer, and I make songs so we took all of our sadness, nervous energy and fear of death and channeled it into making something light and fun — something to counterbalance what we were dealing with,” Hagen adds. “It feels fitting that the video is about vampires, your classic death creature, having a goofy romp — it reflects what we were trying to do — flip a feeling on its head, and that feels very Vundabar-ish.”
Check out the video and the full list of tour dates below.
Vundabar 2021 Tour Dates:
September 23: Boise, ID @ Treefort Festival
September 24: Reno, NV @ Holland Project
September 25: San Francisco, CA @ Bottom of the Hill
September 29: Los Angeles, CA @ Teragram Ballroom
October 20: Washington, DC @ Black Cat
October 21: Philadelphia, PA @ Philamoca
October 22: Philadelphia, PA @ Philamoca
October 23: Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg
October 24: New Haven, CT @ The State House
November 27 – Boston, MA @ The Paradise
