When being a musician has lost its zing, and just isn’t paying the bills, you need to take a hard look at your life. Maybe it’s time to explore other options, and consider the world of high romance amateur banditry. Halifax’s Devarrow proves that the only thing standing between you and your new life is a pair of stockings.
Devarrow have released a video directed by award winning filmmaker Jaret Belliveau for their song ‘Little Road’. The track comes from their 2015 album ‘The Great Escape’. This is the first music video from Devarrow but not the first collaboration with Belliveau. The two first worked together on Belliveau’s 2011 directorial debut film, ‘Highway Gospel’, which included tracks from Devarrow’s first album, ‘The Coast, The Cottage’.
Devarrow’s Graham Ereaux says that the beauty of what they’ve created came out of the limitations of necessity: small budget, single camera. “Working at night is also quite fun and mysterious, so we tried to shoot most of the video in low light. The video was also largely inspired by the constraints that Jaret and I had. We had an incredibly small budget to make the video with, so we focused on making a strong storyline with strong imagery. Considering our time and gear constraints, I’m still in awe of how Jaret managed to pull together such a great video. Jaret really is an insanely talented director and filmmaker.”
The result is a simple, focused story that draws you in and lets you scratch away at the characters and their motives. We watch as the characters embrace the allure of old westerns, flirting with edge of trouble, and leave us just before they take the plunge.
“I’ve always liked that blurry line between truth and make-believe, and I guess a lot of our inspiration came from that. We wanted to make something that was believable, but also kind of odd and would make people scratch their heads a little bit. We decided on the banditry because it has a strong reference to youth and make-believe, but can also be a much more serious subject. Including the shots from the old western film was an attempt to tie together those ideas of acting, make-believe and an embellished sense of reality.”
Ereaux says that despites the video’s themes, he doesn’t have any plans for embarking down a new and exciting career path, no matter the incentive. Ultimately it boils down to a career in music being far simpler as far as showing your face around town.
“No alternative career plans for me! I made the full leap into music about two years ago, and haven’t considered anything else since. It can be quite daunting at times, but it never feels like ‘work’ and that’s what I love about it. Any job that involves traveling and meeting great people is fine by me too.”
Devarrow’s next album ‘Hollywood’ is expected to come out sometime next year, but in the meantime you can catch him performing at Nova Scotia Music Week.