Toronto’s Jiants, with ex-pro skateboarder Jesse Landen, Adam Kesek and Michael Tilley, just released their first LP this past August. [Listen to the full album here.] Hot on its heels is the band’s first single, Paralyze, with plenty of fuzzed-out sounds that will transport you back to the best of 90s indie rock.
Aidan Johnston, who directed the band’s first video (and who has written for NOW in the past), uses that nostalgia as a jumping off point. A young woman looks back on a summer fling, complete with night-time pool-hopping, skateboarding and bike-riding dates, gradually seeing it for what it really was.
“When I first started making the treatment, I was thinking about it like a road movie where couples are on the run and holed up together,” Johnston says. “My elevator pitch would’ve been, ‘It’s Bonnie & Clyde with public pools instead of banks and pilsners instead of guns!’ But really it’s just about the highs and lows of getting swept up in something that’s right for the moment but not meant to last.”
Enjoy.
Jiants – Paralyze from Aidan Johnston on Vimeo.
See Jiants play at the Horseshoe Tavern on October 13.
kater@nowtoronto.com | @katernow