Video premiere: The Gooms, ‘Free Sweaters? Fantastic!’

Kevin Bronson on June 9th, 2020

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The Gooms (Photo by Miguel Vasconcellos)

More than a quarter century after another Los Angeles band immortalized knitwear, up-and-coming garage-rockers the Gooms stitch together another song with a melancholy theme that sounds like zany fun.

“Free Sweaters? Fantastic!” is the second single from the quartet’s first full-length, “Laugh.,” which figures to add some badly needed levity to the summer of 2020 when it arrives on July 24. The band — singer-guitarist Chase Buttons, guitarist Nicole Rae, bassist Ryan Meagher and drummer Shane Lawrence — debuted in 2018 with an EP, “With an M.”

All four act out in the Josh Jalil-edited video for “Free Sweater? Fantastic!” — and, yes, those look like goofball antics, except they raise some serious questions about the search for identity. “We’re slowly, but surely unraveling in the face of deciding which version of ourselves we want to be today — something many of us are feeling right now,” the band says. “It’s the dark undertones of the song that are layered with silly jiggling and flailing air guitar that make for an eye catching music video you can’t help but dance to.”

As for the album, the Gooms have made the title an imperative: “‘Laugh.’ circles the theme around tragedy and how to deal with feeling extremely down and heavy-hearted in both good and bad times,” they say. “It is honest to a fault without pretense. While dealing with this heavy subject matter, we also intended to showcase our ever present goofiness, silliness and ability to find humor in dark places.

“The album title ‘Laugh.’ is a command, thanks to the period at the end of the word. It’s telling you to be happy and smile and feel good in a time where it’s hard to do so. Even the album title on the artwork is arched down with a shape of a frown. There are contrasting parallels between dark themes and upbeat sounds within our music.”

||| Watch: The video for “Free Sweaters? Fantastic!”