Chicago four-piece Dendrons are currently hard at work beneath the blazing sun of El Paso, Texas recording their second album 5-3-8 with engineer/producers Sonny DiPerri (Protomartyr, DIIV, Nine Inch Nails, Animal Collective,) and frequent collaborator, Tony Brant. We’re going to have to wait until 2022 to hear the full fruits of their labours, but to whet our appetites they’ve unveiled an intriguing taste of what’s to come with new single ‘Same Spot’.
We’re delighted to bring you a first look at the video of the track, which from the clanging discord of it’s opening, through the pulsing post-punk bass and Sonic Youth does shoegaze guitars provides a portent of a very exciting record to come.
The band shared their thoughts on the track:
What inspired the song?
Lyrically this song started off with a few vague images, as do many lyrics I come up with, and I sort of pieced them together. The whole band ultimately helped edit.
Originally, I pictured a sort of a sprawling, dystopian city—a kind of rusty city hell.
In it, I imagined two main characters, possibly a couple (or friends), looking down from a rooftop into smog and the industrial rat race. They are bolstering one-another, speaking as if they are separate from it, when in reality they are destined to be a part of it—Destined to repeat patterns + identify with them.
The characters find comfort in each other, not in the world, it would seem. But they are of the world. They are worldly.
I was reading Dante’s Inferno a lot. Dante’s rings of the underworld and different circles of hell was something I was thinking about. Circle imagery is sprinkled liberally throughout the song. I kind of thought of circles and how it relates to the Ouroboros. The lyrics “ You watch impalas move donuts round the lot. They all move backwards. They all move back.” Is my wink and nod to Circle 8, Bolgia 4 from Dante.
The characters in the song talk in circles, and keep cycling through a wide spectrum of talking points. They do this until they land on something they both intrinsically agree on, forgetting the lot of their disagreements——Feelings of understanding overshadowing anything else. That can be distorting. I imagined the two characters in the song on some kind of amphetamine.
I kept thinking about politicians like Trump, who are constantly speaking on every side of an issue, as a manipulation tactic, so his base will eventually zone in on what they wanted to hear from the beginning. He will affirm and denounce the same subject in one ramble. I think about how often I’ve known people who work like this.
The song is kind of a hodgepodge, for sure.
What do you want people to take away from the song?
Everyone’s interpretation of the song is true and valid. I don’t want to tell anyone what to take away or feel from it. If someone gets something totally different from what I originally intended, that’s beautiful. A lot of things are open ended and language is flexible.
Anything else noteworthy?
The music video to ‘Same Spot’ was made by the band, and a lot of it was recorded with a junker surveillance camera one of our band members bought online.
‘Same Spot’ is out now on Earth Libraries. Look out for the album, 5-3-8, due for release next year.
Find out more on Dendrons‘ official website.
Article by Paul Maps
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