As the great 20th-century poet Richard Ashcroft once sang with The Verve back in the mid-’90s, “I’ve been on the shelf too long.” That’s how we’ve been feeling over the past two years as the pandemic age has sucked the soul right out from living; but with things finally shaping up and our lockdown lives shipping out, we’re eager to just go run wild in the motherfucking streets.
Velvet Starlings got that memo too, and this week unveiled their new music video for “Can’t Control,” the fifth single from the raucous Los Angeles rock and roll band’s debut album Technicolour Shakedown, a true 2021 fave for us here at Vanyaland. The visual arrives with the vinyl release of the LP, which hit yesterday (February 8) via Kitten Robot Records/Sound x 3 Records.
“It’s all about being an individual and doing whatever you feel, when you feel it, even if it’s running out into the streets and dancing Billy Elliot-style all the way through the town of Dunfermline, Scotland,” says Starlings’ Christian Gisborne. The clip was directed by Brian Hughes and features brother Martin Hughes, both of Scottish indie band Angelica Mode. Gisborne says Martin “is just such a dynamo, he never stops moving.”
As the track runs wild with propulsive all-nighter shake-shake abandon, the video premiered on BlackBook, and Gisborne tells ’em this: “‘Can’t Control’ is the closest thing to a soul track that the Starlings have come to. While there’s still your fair share of fuzz organ and distortion on every instrument going on, as a producer, I wanted to go for something that sounded not just like the music our idols made, but the music our idols’ idols made.”
Get off the shelf and get busy.