Exit Strategy - Videos

Larvae albums tend to come out in three year intervals which seems like an eternity when I'm in that in-between state. One of the reasons that each new album is a daunting project is that any live performance of new music needs to be accompanied by new videos. The albums are typically written and recorded in three or four months, but adding a slate of video production draws that timeline out considerably.

Luckily, I had no shortage of ideas for videos for the songs on Exit Strategy.  As the songs were inspired by very real and immediate events, I had plenty of ways to visualize them.  The problem was that I wanted to take the video production in a much more personal and narrative direction which is typically labor-intensive. In the past, we've mixed up the videos between the fun, pop culture mashups and send ups and the more melancholy short narratives, often shot on Super 8 film.

"Vows & Promises" is the first complete video from Exit Strategy. It was shot on a Canon T2i during one weekend in Portland, Oregon with the help of a couple of old friends. If the structure of the video feels a little familar, that's on purpose. This is the thrid in a trilogy of videos that feature people repeating some activity in an effort to make sense of the world. "Bubastis" featured a woman who saw the world through her Polaroid camera, while "Snowday" tracked a young girl trying to erase her humdrum suburban life by crossing out words in the dictionary. "Vows" takes a similar approach but in a more constructive direction. See for yourself:

Vows & Promises from Matthew Jeanes on Vimeo.