Nation Of Language – “Too Much, Enough”
Nation Of Language seemingly never stop releasing new music, and they’re not about to stop today. Fresh off an excellent showing at Pitchfork Music Festival last weekend, the NYC synthpop trio is back with the latest single from September’s Strange Disciple to go along with “Sole Obsession,” “Weak In Your Light,” and “Stumbling Still.”
Today’s new offering, “Too Much, Enough,” is a meditation on the toxic 24-hour news cycle. It’s paired with a video featuring actor Jimmi Simpson plus a number of musicians including Reggie Watts, Kevin Morby, Tomberlin, Moldy Peaches’ Adam Green, LVL UP’s Greg Rutkin, and more. A word from Nation Of Language:
“Too Much, Enough” is a song born out of an exhaustion with the 24 hour news cycle and the outrage bait it uses to get everyone permanently wound up. It seems the only way to find an edge in the media business is to appeal to our most base instincts of disgust (see: the high ratings of Fox News, etc.), and we end up suffering both individually and collectively for it.
When it came to creating a visual to go alongside the song, we didn’t want the music video to be its own form of outrage bait so we went with a more absurdist approach, gathering some friends of ours, and of our incredible director Robert Kolodny, to make something fun and outlandish to that effect. We also laced the video with as many NOL-related Easter eggs and iconography as possible to give anyone watching an opportunity to play along at home and be a part of that absurdity. It felt good to try to name a problem for ourselves without leaning on fear and rage.
It’s a powerful thing to deny someone the ability to manipulate your most destructive emotions, and that’s something we want to celebrate here.
The overarching theme of Strange Disciple is infatuation and how one’s reality can be warped by it. We went a more romantic route with that on the previous video, but News is one of those less interpersonal activities it feels like everyone takes part in, so we wanted to show our disciple is just as susceptible to it as any other figure.
Watch below.
Strange Disciple is out 9/15 on [PIAS].