Bristol’s rock trio Krooked Tongue return with a cinematic, Scorsese-inspired music video for recent single “Backseat Therapy,” released on September 29th 2023, taken from their recent EP Deathproof.
The EP’s previous singles Lupines and Velociraptor were championed by the likes of Ones To Watch, Loudwire, Louder Than War Radio, Sirius XM and BBC Introducing and saw the band go on to secure slots at festivals such as Icebreaker, Burn It Down and Estonia’s Tallinn Music Week.
Krooked Tongue formed in 2019, bursting onto the scene with the release of their celebrated debut single “I Wanna Steal Your Car.” The band spent 2020 honing in on a more refined studio sound with Josh Gallop (Phoxjaw, Mother Vulture) at Stage 2 Studios in Bath; the result of this being their critically acclaimed debut EP No Vacancy Hotel released in February of 2022, which has since amassed over 160,000 streams and saw support from Ones To Watch, HardBeat Magazine and Distorted Sound.
Their recent second studio EP Deathproof, released May 5th 2023, already streamed over 140,000 times, perfectly highlights the band’s evolution; there’s a refreshed maturity to their songwriting and an evident progression in their sound. Fusing punchy, melodic bass riffs, searing lead guitar lines, thundering Seb Granger inspired drum sounds and the cool, collective swagger of Rainsford’s catchy vocals, Deathproof is without a doubt their strongest work to date.
Their new single “Backseat Therapy,” taken from the EP, was inspired by an encounter vocalist and lyricist Oli Rainsford had had with a down on his luck taxi driver.
Explaining what happened, Rainsford says, “I wrote ‘Backseat Therapy’ after jumping in a cab one day and the driver started venting to me about the shitty day he was having. We were continuously getting stuck in traffic and he kept apologising that he couldn’t get me to where I was going quicker, despite me telling him it was absolutely fine and not his fault. The conversation led to him telling me about how badly some passengers had treated him and that he was considering quitting. I ended up kind of being a life coach for the journey and reassured him that he was a nice bloke and he was doing a good job. Hence ‘Backseat Therapy’. Taxi, this one’s for you!”
The single’s Scorsese-inspired music video, was filmed with cinematographer Sam East.
Discussing their ideas behind the creation of the music video, the band state:
“The basis for the music video came about from just spitballing some ideas in the van on the way to a show a few weeks back. Oli had a general idea of the aesthetic of the video and how it would match up to his lyrics, but we didn’t want to go with the obvious nature of the story, we wanted to do something fun and different to the stand out notion of the song itself. That’s where the kidnap the drummer idea sprung up. Anyone who’s anyone in the music world has seen the ‘drummer wanted’ posters at rehearsal studios and all over the message boards of desolate lobbies, so we thought we’d do our take on that in a literal sense. It was so fun to film and Sam (East) did an amazing job at capturing that cold indie film vibe that we sought after. We wanted the video to feel as if it were taken from the B-roll of an early Scorsese flick, somewhere between Drugstore Cowboy and Goodfellas, and in fairness we did straight up rip the boot opening scene from Goodfellas (laughs). We can’t wait for everyone to see it, especially after all of the love we received on our last video for ‘When the Beaches Bleed’. Set up your surround sound and get yourself some popcorn, people.”
