S.Lo on April 19th, 2019

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The Paranoyds prefer to live IRL, playing shows instead of spending too much time on Facebook (from which they are absent). As a generation raised on so-called reality TV and the blossoming power of social media, Laila Hashemi (keyboardist-vocals), Lexi Funston (guitars/vocals), Staz Lindes (bass/vocals) and David Ruiz (drums, vocals) call B.S. on manufactured, distorted reality programming aiming, in the end, to sell product and advertising. Newly signed to Suicide Squeeze, the L.A. band’s new single and video for the song “Hungry Sam” plays out the grotesque-ness of following internet and television-fed fads.

In a recent interview, Funston, who stars as the main protagonist in the video, said, “We all [have thoughts] about reality TV and how it affects our day to day. The music video [kind of depicts] a dystopian reality TV cooking show — like what might happen if you blindly follow those shows. So I cook something that makes everybody sick but people are just blindly following it.”

Prefacing playfully pounding power chords, the video features Funston obsessing on popping her pimples (a nod perhaps to the pimple popping doctor videos that went viral a couple years ago) before an overly-contoured show runner shares a magic purple shake (that looks just a shade lighter than the much-touted wonder-food açai). The video, directed by Giraffe Studios Imagination Emporium and edited by Zoë Lambert, then cuts to a shot of Funston slurping the purple Kool-Aid, so to speak, as shown on the mirror of a contour makeup kit not unlike the Anastasia Beverly Hills line that started the trend of precise cheekbone shading, which the Kardashians made viral on social media. As the song begins, Funston spreads the smoothie all over her face (like the many-flavored facials being sold today) before chugging down more on her way to the set. It’s all enough to induce obsessive social anxiety, as Funston sings, “I was hungry so I ate my words / Ate em all, it was all a blur / Last night uncontrollably / I binged then I fell asleep / Panic-stricken, I’m waking in bed / Is that really what I thought I said? / I opened up my mouth / And the words they fell right out / Hungry, I was / Hungry.”

Lindes explains further the dystopian concept behind the video, “Our generation was kind of the guinea pig for early reality TV; we had Jerry Springer, ‘The Simple Life’ and all of the VH1 stuff. We were like, ‘Oh this is so funny,’ and that’s why we see those Jerry Springer memes [on Tumblr] now. But now fast forward 10 years later, and the fucking president is a reality TV star and the Kardashians are in power. Now it’s like actual life. It’s such a distorted time for what’s real and what’s not. So ‘Hungry Sam’ is maybe commentary on that.”

In a full band statement about the takeover of reality TV, they share the observation that “People are willing to ingest just about anything, so long as their like-and-subscribed heroes have put their stamp of approval on it.”

The Paranoyds, in this case, are anti-heroes. With such astute commentary on meaningless trends over-hyped on the internet and television programming over the last couple decades, feel free to hit that “Like” button as you watch the video on YouTube. The full EP, “Hungry Sam,” and limited edition 7-inch vinyl for the single, will be released July 14.

||| Watch: The video for “Hungry Sam”

||| Live: The Paranoyds open for the Shrine tonight at the House of Machines (Cat Scan also open – Tickets) and open for Tacocat at the Bootleg on June 25 (Tickets).

||| Previously: Live at the Echo,  Live at the Moroccan, Live at the Troubadour, Live at the Regent Theater