Ears Wide Open: Scott Gilmore

Gracie Hadland on February 25th, 2019

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The seductively strange visuals for Scott Gilmore’s recent single “Two Roomed Motel” show the musician in various settings stoic and solitary: alone at a bar, in the bathtub, wandering the vacant streets. The experimental pop tune plays, the sounds multiplying as Gilmore collects instruments in the motel room. The L.A.-based artist uses synthesizers, drum machines, electric bass and acoustic and electric guitars, putting together songs reminiscent of Arthur Russell and the sounds of late ’70s downtown disco.

The song anchors Gilmore’s new album, “Two Roomed Motel,” which comes out on Friday via the Belgian label Crammed Discs. It’s the second full-length from the San Fernando Valley denizen, who debuted in 2017 with the album “Subtle Vertigo” and followed the next year with an EP, “Another Day.”

In the second video from the new album, “All Our Stuff” (which Gilmore directed himself), he exercises a similar off-kilter, deadpan humor. He stars as a contemplative paddle-boater apathetically wading in a man-made body of water in a boat shaped like a swan while the unlikely pop song scores his voyage. “The song and video are both loosely based on the idea of attempting to inhabit a place that perpetually remains distant,” he says. One can’t help but think that these sounds coarse through Gilmore’s head, that they are the accompaniment to his everyday life.

||| Watch: The video for “All Our Stuff” and “Two Roomed Motel”