Don’t Slow Down: Goodbye Heart’s New Video Drives Matt Crazy
When people ask me what kind of music I like, my most frequent (and not coincidentally most hyperbolic) answer is:
“I like two kinds of music, music that annihilates everything in its path and music so beautiful it feels like its tearing my heart out and showing it to me.”
Recent Seattle transplants Goodbye Heart (Nila K Leigh and Sam Ford) fall in to the latter category, having released a perfect 5-song EP called Restless Nights earlier this year that’s full of gorgeous, patient melodies and lovely boy/girl harmonizing over a bed of textured bass and synthesizer sounds. The collection feels like a warm blanket analogous to your favorite tracks from Washed Out with pretty guitar lines and vocals that recall Autre Ne Veux.
I’ve spent the last few weeks sitting on their first official video, trying to decide if it’s as brilliant as their songs and their aesthetic or if it’s just a cheap rip-off from the arty 2001 noir crime film Drive. The fact that I found said movie to be equally conflicting (the first 15 minutes are among my favorite in recent movie history and the soundtrack is absolutely brilliant but overall I thought it was kind of terrible) seemed to slow my initial assessment, but I realized that wasn’t the thing that’s been driving me crazy about the video. The thing that’s been driving me crazy about “Don’t Slow Down” is that I already have such a personal connection to the band from watching their lovely KEXP live set and listening to Restless Nights with my headphones on that this new embodiment of their creativity feels like a break in that bond… like it’s telling me how I should feel when I listen to their music when I’ve already decided on something different.
That’s an extremely personal and probably useless piece of information that shouldn’t prevent you from watching “Don’t Slow Down,” which is sexy as hell and portrays the band in a dead-cool crime drama of its own (my favorite shot is the one of Sam nervously chewing gum in the getaway car), and then rushing to their bandcamp page to give them as much money as you can spare for the EP.