The Early November play make-believe in their new "Tell Me Why" video.
Love and war are flip sides of the same coin. It's an analogy as appropriate today as it was in Homer's "Odyssey" and Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield" (just to name a few examples). The Early November, the New Jersey five-piece and early '00s Vans Warped Tour mainstays, know what we mean. Their new video, "Tell Me Why," sets the tale of lost love to one of imagined war. OR IS IT REAL AFTER ALL? Probably not, but, you know, it feels like it sometimes .
Watch The Early November's "Tell Me Why" video after the jump.
The song's video, taken from last summer's In Currents, TEN's first album since 2006, follows a young boy running through the woods, firing imaginary bullets at unseen enemies and running for his life from something that he doesn't quite understand. Long story short, it's actually a good way to sum up the last 20 years of emotional pop-punk.
"Tell me why you left/ tell me where you went/ tell me why am I worth the lines," Arhur Enders sings in multi-tracked, harmonized vocals here over a swell of power chords and uplifting synths. "Tell me all you want/ keep me holding on/ Tell me lies/ tell me why."
"We've been working with (director) Trevor Bowman for the past few years and knew he would do a great job with this one," guitarist Joe Marro told us. "He has a great understanding of what we do and do not like and the band's aesthetic. For 'Tell Me Why,' I knew I didn't want something too linear or song specific. I'm a bigger fan of seeing interesting images and letting the viewer piece them together and make a picture out of it. The video itself gives makes me slightly nostalgic, and you really worry for the boy during parts, mainly due to his great performance. At the end, it's relieving and content, which complements the song nicely."
"Tell Me Why"'s visuals DO fit the song's theme nicely. Much like the boy in the video, it can be hard to tell what's real or not real in a relationship. What were we fighting for? Who were we fighting against? Most of the time it was ourselves, and not some easily blamable unseen force. Sometimes, however, it was definitely creeping tree monsters like the ones in "Tell Me Why," who, as legend has it, have been plotting to overthrow the hearts and minds of young people everywhere since the dawn of time. The only way to fight back is to refuse to accept their power. Also, chain saws. Either that, or drown out your sorrows with romantic rock songs. Maybe we'll try the latter here and see how that works out first. "Tell Me Why" makes it easy to want to.
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