The latest single from Nova Scotia-based Language Arts hits heavy on the nostalgia, dipping heavily into a treasure trove of ’80s and ’90s commercials for a Britton Proulx-created video to subtly remind us that if there were ever a time we needed to hear the immortal words “don’t you put it in your mouth,” this is it.
You can practically smell the combination of shag carpet, gak and fruit-by-the-foot wafting off the video. It’s like Proulx tapped directly into the early Millenial subconscious, a direct product of television, only to throw it back at us: an age that was marked by innocence and hyper-consumerism.
“This goes out to a generation who grew up under the strobe of 1980’s and 90’s pop culture; those who chewed on ‘Bonkers,’ hopped on a ‘pogo ball,’ and ate sugar-dusted cereals for breakfast,” says Kristen Cudmore of Language Arts.
“Once, so blissfully unaware that ‘this is your brain… and this is your brain on drugs,’ messaging didn’t apply to the Ritalin prescriptions that were needlessly handed out to the kiddos. A time when the ‘arcade games came home’ and ‘Pee-Wee’s Playhouse’ was sandwiched between every possible transforming toy a child could imagine. Aren’t we all robots in disguise?
“Nostalgia is so warm but also disturbing to wonder how much it formed who one is today, ever so hungry for dreams to come true at the expense of ‘sinking someone else’s battleship.’ From this ‘view master’ or on ‘these big wheels,’ our generation has gone to places we never thought we would ‘speak and spell’ because we got so comfortable shining in front of the ‘light-bright,’ we never stopped to actually feel the blood flow in our veins. Remember?”
“Blood Flow” is set to appear on Language Art’s upcoming album, Lemon/Lime.