Motherhood, Fredericton’s favourite musical miscreants put out a video for ‘Sayin’?’ from their album ‘Baby Teeth’ released in June. As per the band’s usual flair, the video captures the essence of “What the heck did I just watch?”
Motherhood’s Brydon Crain says that he was going for a sad, remorseful, bitter country song. He didn’t specify which country he was referring to, but presumably he said that with a straight face. “It’s almost like an excerpt from an argument or a person getting worked up in their head. [It’s about] dying probably. I think about it quite a bit.”
The video was directed by Brydon’s brother Cameron, otherwise know as beat-meister Captain III. “We showed up and did what we were told for about three hours and we were done. The editing he did must have taken forever though, there’s a lot in there and I think he did a great job. It was all editing, we all did singing takes and then a bunch of weird stuff and cam mixed it all up. Part of it is stop motion, [that] was weird because he told us to just do weird movements so that it would look like a strange, flailing dance. It was like 200 weird poses.”
“Whenever I make videos I try to just make them visuals that supplement the music instead of something more in depth with a storyline,” says Cameron Crain. “I just want them to add a bit of visual stimulation to the main attraction. What usually happens is I come up with a weird technique to base it around – in this case it was primarily the glitching effect and the slightly slow-mo movements. I came up with a few ideas and assigned each one to a certain element of the song. From there, Motherhood and I decided it would be cool to shoot it in their rehearsal space. The idea was that it makes sense to capture them in their natural habitat, as opposed to some other spot that has nothing to do with their music.”
Motherhood have a long established reputation for successfully pushing creative boundaries, and spurring on the Fredericton musical community. The video effectively captures the spontaneous and spasmodic energy of their live performances. Always over the top, but authentic in their rough sort of genius.
The best the best way to summarise Motherhood might be in Cameron’s insightful comment about working with his brother, “It’s great, he was easy to work with. I asked him to go all out and he pulled off a really cool performance. His movements remind me of an exasperated southern dirt farmer.”
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