Video: The Neighbourhood, ‘Cherry Flavoured’

Kevin Bronson on August 3rd, 2020

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The Neighbourhood (Photo by Haley Appell and Lauren Leekley)

From the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band to David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust to Damon Albarn’s Gorillaz to Alex Ebert’s Edward Sharpe, artistic personas can be vehicles for inspiration and experimentation as musicians shed one musical skin for another. For the Neighbourhood, it sounds as if it means getting back to basics.

On Sept. 25, the Newbury Park quintet will introduce “Chip Chrome & The Mono-Tones,” their fourth full-length album. The first two reveals from the album, last week’s single “Cherry Flavoured” and last year’s “Middle of Somewhere,” fall somewhere in heartfelt-dream-pop-ballad territory, sounding like songs that could have predated their breakout alt-pop anthem “Sweater Weather.” And to think the title of their wild-and-woolly, production-heavy, 21-track 2018 album was “Hard to Imagine The Neighbourhood Ever Changing.”

Apparently, frontman Jesse Rutherford gave it some thought.

“We came out of the gate pretty hot and successful with ‘Sweater Weather,’ but then I always got stuck in my head and thought, ‘How can I do it again?'” Rutherford acknowledges. “I didn’t want to do that this time; I wanted to do something totally new.” So to start off the new year, he “got off the internet, picked up a guitar, played it until [his] fingers bled, and learned how to write songs in a new way,” he adds.

The shiny-grilled, silver-painted Chip Chrome character first appeared in last summer’s “Middle of Somewhere video. With no warning before the shoot, “I showed up in silver spandex and paint. To my surprise, it was the best move I could’ve made with the band,” Rutherford says of mates Jeremy Freedman, Zach Abels, Mikey Margott and Brandon Fried, “because they ended up liking how wacky and interesting it was. In the process, I still got to do the most Jesse thing possible. Chip was a way for me to say, ‘I’m going to do me. You’re not going to stop me.’”

Rutherford was seeking “a different way to speak” with the next batch of Neighbourhood music. “Sometimes, it’s hard for me to put it into words — even though it’s supposed to be my job with the lyrics,” he says. “Chip helped me find that voice. He’s the best leader I could be for this project, for the boys and for my friends. The Mono-Tones are the voices in my head that are always there. They can be a bit haunting and keep me up at night, but I trust their taste. … The funny thing is it takes the piss out of being so serious. I don’t want to be brooding. A lot of these songs are based on major chords, so it might be a happier version of the Neighbourhood.”

As for “Cherry Flavoured,” Rutherford says, “It’s something that seems really good and sweet when you’re talking about it, but it may not be possible in reality. I ended up going to an internal place and got back to me. I realized, ‘Maybe I’m the one who’s putting the cherry flavoring in these conversations?’ I needed to take a look at myself.”

The Nickelodeon-ready video for “Cherry Flavoured,” directed and animated by Christopher Wilson, follows the band’s journey to Chip Chrome & The Mono-Tones.

||| Watch: The video for “Cherry Flavoured”