Sean Nicholas Savage escapes corporate claustrophobia in “Splash”

Watch the new music video from the Montreal artist’s latest LP Screamo.

July 02, 2018

"Splash," a standout song from Montreal musician Sean Nicholas Savage's new album Screamo, is a transmission from the midpoint between the known and unknown, the moment right after you've rolled the dice but before you can know if your gamble has paid off. The song's vivaciousness is a feature of Savage's soulful catalogue, which includes many albums and collaborations with artists like Solange and Kirin J Callinan.


The music video for "Splash," premiering today on The FADER, opens in the opposite of Savage's realm: a lifeless catalogue of corporate scenes so soul-rending, no amount of desktop plants can mollify them. Right as the song's astral mall-pop kicks in, director Oliver McGarvey's video escapes to a place that has its own set of rules and a distinct feeling of freedom... like a really great Sean Nicholas Savage song.

Read Savage's statement on the song and video below:

Standing on a tall diving board, maybe at an outdoor swimming pool, and the sun’s going down, so the pool will be closing soon, and your friends are down below. You look across the board and it’s just a sunset, you’re all afraid to jump, you just run and push your feet down into the board. That’s where the song ends, physically.

The lyrics of 'Splash' are focused on the dawn of the age of accountability. This is only the beginning, of something we can barely fathom. I likely won’t live to the swinging 2060’s, so i’m not even going to catch the internet part II in the 2080’s. I have to believe in the influence within me, the context that even my feelings give, to the variables that make up the world around me, and how the future forever beyond is a part of me, just as the past forever behind.

Oliver McGarvey’s film to the music, starring myself, is focused on the escape of monotonous mass uniform, the world complacent. I follow my guiding force into the future, into the mysterious night, through to a sunrise. Both the song and the film portray the confusion and poetry in such matters, the relentless Shakespeare play of life, (my words not his).

I hope you enjoy the song and the film.

Thank you forever.

Watch "Splash" above, and check out Sean Nicholas Savage's upcoming tour dates below. You can buy tickets at the Arbutus Records website.

Sean Nicholas Savage tour dates

7/6 - Kutná Hora, CZ - Creepy Teepee
7/7 - Edmonton, AB - The Rec Room
8/4 - London, UK - Visions Festival @ Sebright Arms
8/10 - Glasgow, UK - Stereo
8/18 - Namur, BE - La Carrière
8/23 - Berlin, DE - Internet Explorer
8/31 - Cornwall, UK - Knee Deep Festival
9/13 - Berlin, DE - Lido
9/15 - Los Angeles, CA - New Factory
9/19 - Vancouver, BC - 333
9/20 - Detroit, MI - Deluxx Fluxx
9/21 - Toronto, ON - Monarch Tavern
9/28 - New York, NY - PUBLIC Arts

Thumbnail photo by Emma Czerny

Sean Nicholas Savage escapes corporate claustrophobia in “Splash”