Photo Credit: Jerry Maestas
L.A. artist Wallice shares the music video for “Off The Rails,” the title track to her new EP, out Friday, June 4th independently. The video portrays Wallice and her band as avatars of a Sims-like computer game, with her actions unexpectedly controlled by a puppet master unseen until the very end of the video. It’s a humorous metaphor for the way our current lives seem to be directed by an ever-present but unseen hand.
Musically, the track is an effervescent slice of indie pop. Beginning with Wallice’s innocent, if slightly stoned solo vocal, she’s soon joined by angelic overdubbed harmonies that fill the listener’s ears, until the track explodes with the full-band arrangment: surf-style guitar with mixed electronic and acoustic drums share the stage with Wallice’s vocal.
Wallice says of the new track: “’Off the Rails” is about feeling like you don’t have any control over your life and that the world is against you—and that you’re the only one that feels that way,” which definitely seems reflected in lines like: “my life’s a mess but I don’t give a shit/I never try my best I learn to live with it. I live my life like I’m the only one going off the rails.”
Fuzzy synth bass towards the middle changes the vibe slightly, and soon Wallice’s vocal begins to feel as distorted and reverbed as the lead guitar. Eventually you can hardly tell the difference when her voice and the guitar blend into one another at the very peak of the songs’ build-up. The guitar almost becomes an extension of the narrator’s buried stress and desperation. Gabe Hernandez