Monteagle Announces 'A Colorful Moth', Shares Daniel Henry Directed Video for Track Tan!
We’re excited to announce a new EP entitled 'A Colorful Moth' from Justin Wilcox's Monteagle project out May 22nd on Fire Talk! Paired with a video for the stark and spacious new song "Tan" directed by Dan Henry, whose work includes music videos for Kurt Vile, Dawes, Jack White, Foster the People and more. The integration of field recording and ambient sound perfectly compliments Henry's video and turns Monteagle's new single into a truly immersive experience. The somewhat dark atmospheric tune that takes some cues from American Primitive but also shows off Wilcox's incredibly adept production work. Speaking to the song Wilcox says it’s;
“Stream of conscious. Wrote what came to mind. There were pigeons outside of this coffee shop and they were vial and mangy. So just wrote what popped in my head then performed it later that day. Sometimes when you write something and don’t think about it you can later look back and find meaning. I feel that this is a great example of finding hope and beauty in a time of intense negativity."
Speaking to the experience of creating the stunning visuals Dan Henry explains;
"Coming from the past few years where everything has to be fast, slick, and immediately engaging; Tan is a slow and patient protest to the pressures of overindulgence. Saying something louder doesn’t make it more powerful. I wanted to string together a series of images that evoke a reaction and also hint at a bigger story about the sameness of everything. For me, every year around New Years comes with a dark cloud. This past year in particular was filled with loss and a heaviness that has stuck with me. I want these images to speak to a larger narrative that runs through all our lives. Things that are constant, but also things that are impermanent, fragile and always at work.
I was overcome by the freedom that came with having the insanely small crew of only myself and friend/collaborator/DP Dustin Lane. What resulted was more intuitive and guttural than anything that happens with a larger crew. We could be slow and wait for the scenes to unfold, or we could walk right in and get next to our subjects, hear from them, without scaring them away with production, because there was no production… but we had a dog."
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Monteagle is the solo moniker of Brooklyn based (Tennessee native) singer songwriter and composer Justin Giles Wilcox. Known primarily for scoring the critically acclaimed short Documentary Twins Days for the New Yorker and for his production and songwriting for the ambient folk duo Nassau, Monteagle sees Wilcox diving further into the uncharted territory of southern influenced experimental psych folk. “A Colorful Moth” a new EP from Wilcox is steeped in vivid imagery or as Paste Magazine describes “tremulous, bare-souled vocals, which are as haunted and alluring as the caves that riddle the rocky hills of the band’s hometown.”
Justin tells the tale of “A Colorful Moth” better than anyone could...
“A while back I hit a little bit of a rough patch. I had just wrapped up a very emotionally draining project, My freelance work was drying up, My mental health was at an all time low, all this amongst some tumultuous personal issues. In the midst of all of the chaos I took a walk, and ended up sitting at a park right outside of my apt in Brooklyn. While I was just sort of staring blankly, a Butterfly flew up and landed next to me on a bench. Without even blinking I looked at it and thought to myself, “This fucking butterfly, there’s no real beauty in it, it’s just a colorful moth”. I kind of lost it. It’s like my mind became clear. I started-laugh crying and realized how casually destructive I was being and accepted that my situation was mainly my own doing. Afterwards, I felt this huge sense of relief and I immediately started writing these songs.”
This EP is unique in that it was written and recorded sequentially. As in each musical idea begot the next. If you listen there are little pieces of the previous song in the next idea. The lyrics are a mish-mash, a direct stream of consciousness, and recollection of various hallucinogenic trips Justin had been on. There’s something soothing in the way that sound and words dance around each other in a surreal exploration of mortality in relation to reality.
”A Colorful Moth” is a sibling component to an upcoming full length scheduled for early 2021.
Get Monteagle’s ‘A Colorful Moth’ & ‘Midnight Noon’ vinyl in one bundle.
Monteagle is the solo moniker of Brooklyn based (Tennessee native) singer songwriter and composer Justin Giles Wilcox. Known primarily for scoring the critically acclaimed short Documentary Twins Days for the New Yorker and for his production and songwriting for the ambient folk duo Nassau, Monteagle sees Wilcox diving further into the uncharted territory of southern influenced experimental psych folk. “A Colorful Moth” a new EP from Wilcox is steeped in vivid imagery or as Paste Magazine describes “tremulous, bare-souled vocals, which are as haunted and alluring as the caves that riddle the rocky hills of the band’s hometown.”
Justin tells the tale of “A Colorful Moth” better than anyone could...
“A while back I hit a little bit of a rough patch. I had just wrapped up a very emotionally draining project, My freelance work was drying up, My mental health was at an all time low, all this amongst some tumultuous personal issues. In the midst of all of the chaos I took a walk, and ended up sitting at a park right outside of my apt in Brooklyn. While I was just sort of staring blankly, a Butterfly flew up and landed next to me on a bench. Without even blinking I looked at it and thought to myself, “This fucking butterfly, there’s no real beauty in it, it’s just a colorful moth”. I kind of lost it. It’s like my mind became clear. I started-laugh crying and realized how casually destructive I was being and accepted that my situation was mainly my own doing. Afterwards, I felt this huge sense of relief and I immediately started writing these songs.”
This EP is unique in that it was written and recorded sequentially. As in each musical idea begot the next. If you listen there are little pieces of the previous song in the next idea. The lyrics are a mish-mash, a direct stream of consciousness, and recollection of various hallucinogenic trips Justin had been on. There’s something soothing in the way that sound and words dance around each other in a surreal exploration of mortality in relation to reality.
”A Colorful Moth” is a sibling component to an upcoming full length scheduled for early 2021.