I love this tune. Dig the guitar leads on the back end. Tents, a Portland band, claim to have shot this video in three days in their own backyard. I don’t know where the yard is, but by looking at the flat ground and the style of houses, my best guess is that this took place in the Rose City’s heartland, the inner southeast, south of Stark and somewhere between 20th and 60th. This is the first single from Deer Keeps Pace, their debut album, due out May 11.
“Back Yards” is– according to Tents’ songwriter Brian Hall– “A driving melancholy indie song about addiction as a destructive force, family as an uplifting force, and the two kind of, at battle with each other. I wrote this song when I was really sick. Not sleeping as much as I should, out drinking with buds on work nights. Turns out I have an autoimmune disease. Geez. So much body shit. In the end of this song, in the bridge, things take a turn a bit. It’s sort of like hapless, helpless, ironic ecstasy. But then also in there is a moment of letting go, which for me at the time very much resembled me shedding the addiction and allowing myself to enjoy my family.”
