Video premiere: The Cabin Fever, ‘Window Pain’

Kevin Bronson on September 10th, 2019

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L.A. slow-gaze trio the Cabin Fever make darkly compelling music, with echoing guitars and rumbling percussion backing Sean Moriarty’s half-whispered, half-sung explorations of the mind’s deep recesses. One of the songwriter’s fascinations is true crime — on the band’s 2018 EP “Exercise the Demon,” he laid out such a scenario in the song “Trucrime.”

That theme recurs in the video for the new song “Window Pain,” from the trio’s forthcoming third EP.

The video is an homage to the Zodiac Killer, the serial killer who claimed 37 victims in Northern California in the 1960s and ’70s and who communicated with authorities via ciphers. In that way, “Window Pain” might be the strangest lyric music video ever conceived.

Moriarty explains: “Truth is always stranger and more compelling to me than fiction could ever be. All images from the video were borrowed from public domain images related to the killer and his terror spree (the Phillips 66 map, sketch artist rendering of the killer, his/her signature crosshair symbol). Much like this killer’s predecessor, the Black Dahlia murderer from the late ’40s, the fact that the responsible person(s) was never caught adds the the lore and mystery and fascination that resonates through the generations since. The concept of the evil genius is something that both fascinates and terrifies me, so [it’s] a natural topic of exploration in my art.

“The symbols scrolling on the screen are the lyrics to the song translated from the Zodiac’s cryptogram that he used in letters he sent to taunt authorities and reporters at the time,” Moriarty adds. “The government’s top agencies couldn’t crack the cipher and eventually it was solved on a Sunday morning over breakfast and a newspaper article featuring the cypher, and it was solved by a husband and wife who were both teachers.

“I took the Zodiac’s deciphered cryptogram and made my own custom font from it and was able to translate the lyrics of the song into the Zodiac cipher. I’m not sure why, but this is the stuff that fascinates me. I got lost in the hours it took to create this font. I guess this is my idea of fun?”

In that context, it’s particularly menacing when Moriarty sings, “Shadow passing by my window …”

The Cabin Fever’s new EP, “Alone Together,” will be out Sept. 27.

||| Watch: The “Zodiac” video for “Window Pain”