“Permanent Embrace,” available now, is the final statement from Uniform ahead of the full release of their anticipated new album American Standard.
Vocalist, Berdan tells, “It touches on a facet of the disease that I’m incredibly wary of facing. Built on a narrative foundation laid out by author and lyrical collaborator Maggie Siebert, the song revolves around the idea of a person holding a loved one as an emotional hostage. Seeing perverse beauty in a story about a car crash, the narrator relates the analogy of two automobiles twisted together to that of his last standing relationship. As he has broken down over time, so has the one who continues to stand by him. The object of his manipulative guilt trips remains locked in a hopeless situation, terrified of what he may do to himself if they were to finally leave.
For “Permanent Embrace,” Uniform teamed up with director Sean Stout on the single’s compelling music video. Stout tells, “Without sounding trite, when we first read Mike’s lyrics to the record our reaction was extremely visceral. They are brutally introspective and beautiful at times and we wanted to try visually to convey that range of emotion in a sequence of single images that unfold narratively and potentially shift their own meaning over time. Our concept was to intertwine images of an outer world-overgrown, rusting and moving on in its decay-with an inter-world that is largely going through the same process as a result, but is markedly separate as well. We never see one observe or interact with the other, yet they are the same and of the same world.”
With every movement of American Standard, Uniform peels off a new layer and tells the story inside of the one that came before it. It’s Uniform’s most intimate work to date, tackling themes of self-destruction with a particular focus on vocalist Michael Berdan’s lifelong struggle with bulimia nervosa. His lyrics sink down into the core of the innermost self, the small human being crushed in the grip of sickness. His bandmates join him, applying majestic droning that becomes both mechanical and omniscient. As the rhythms continually pulverize, Uniform gives themselves over to the grinding gears of an uncaring universe.
Are you vibing with this one?
