Video premiere: Nyles Lannon, ‘Love Again’

Kevin Bronson on June 19th, 2019

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Nyles Lannon has explored the dreamier fringes of indie-rock and folk for two decades, both as a solo artist (with much of his music released under the names n.Lannon / N. Lannon) and as a founding member of and guitarist for the shoegaze band Film School. On his new EP, “The Clouds and the Sea,” Lannon moved away from the bedroom stylings of his early releases and embraced an expansive sound marked by washes of guitar and synth. It’s psychedelic pop driven by warm melody and textures and informed by the sense that the songwriter has outgrown his ennui and sees a big picture.

That Lannon turns the New Wave classic “Destination Unknown” into something mystical is a bonus.

The visuals that accompany the EP are the work of Jonathan Caouette, maker of the award-winning 2003 documentary “Tarnation,” which found him mining family movie, video and photographic archives to tell a heart-rending story. (This Saturday, the film gets a 15th-anniversary screening, followed by a Q&A, at the Hammer Museum’s Billy Wilder Theater.) For Lannon’s video, Caouette again works largely with found footage, mixing it with psychedelic effects in compelling montages.

“This is my crazy version of a fan video,” Caouette says of the video for “Love Again.” “I wanted to create something that captured the nostalgic flavor of this song, something that was innocent and fun, with a twinge of the irreverent. Naturally, images of ’70s skateboarding seemed to fit the bill, and this resonated with Nyles since skateboarding was a big part of his youth. I found a bunch of great old clips and just had some fun mashing it all up, adding some of my own electricity to highlight the energy of the song.”

The song, Lannon says, is “straight from the heart.”

“It’s about learning to let go, learning how to open up to others after you have been broken. After going through a particularly hard time in my life, this song was like a catharsis; it was part my own way of healing. Musically, the song flowed very easily, recorded at my home studio with my bandmates. It seemed to just pop into existence, like a gift. It will always remind me of a particular poignant and yet beautiful time.”

The EP is out via Badman Recording Co. Flash back with him here:

||| Watch: The video for “Love Again”