While they may be on tour in New York, local L.A. favorites, the Dead Ships have released a ferocious yet comical video for their new single, “Golden Room”. As the first track released from their upcoming sophomore record, which was produced by Brendan Canning (Broken Social Scene), the song is an explosive garage rock banger that just might drive you mad. In fact, in the video it drives one particular under-the-bridge dwelling creature of downtown L.A. pretty bonkers. With a bit of gore and full throttle rock ‘n’ roll sounds, this ode to one of Echo Park’s finest dive bars is actually about the existing gentrification happening in the community. Below is a quote from the Dead Ships’ frontman Devlin McCluskey.
PHOTOS: The Dead Ships at The Echo
“It’s always sad to think of longtime ethnic communities pushed out by scruffy drunk white kids but it’s alot sadder to realize that I and most of the people I know are those scruffy drunk white kids. Echo Park is my favorite part of Los Angeles and it’s like alot of the perpetually changing neighborhoods across the country; for years it was supposedly a very dangerous place but it’s now lined with upscale-y restaurants serving craft beer, and hipper bars with artisanal lightbulbs. All of which I personally love. There’s a misguided belief that these changes are progress but in actuality these “dangerous” old neighborhoods seem to be further fracturing and devolving into bar strips. Puke, urine, drunk drivers, and drunker walkers getting into fights and falling down in the old barrios that we can now pretend to own. I wish I could write a song about the issues facing a gentrifying neighborhood but they just provide window dressing for our faux-bohemian debauchery and that’s essentially what Goldenroom is trying to evoke. The only issue any drunk white kid might be qualified to speak to is avoiding alcoholism, so we’ll stick to that. I don’t know if the bullshit fantasy of living here was also a misguided motivation for Tom Waits and Woody Guthrie but I hope not.”
Good To Know: The Dead Ships’ new video for “Golden Room” was directed and made by the L.A. blues/garage duo, Herculion (Mitchel McKenzie and Aaron Silverstein)!
PHOTOS: The Dead Ships at The Roxy
