Boombox Blitz: FRANKIIE weep over life & death with ‘Glory Me’ video
The alt-rock group make their long-awaited return with a musing on mortality.
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The thought of mortality is chilling. As I’ve entered my 30s, more and more of my friends are dying ⎯⎯ some from health complications; others in freak accidents. It’s unsettling to imagine there is less time ahead for me than remains behind: it’s a natural philosophical stopover, wreathed in our triumphs and failures. There’s no way we can ever be ready for it, of course, a necessary transformation we all must undertake. Stuck in neutral, Francesca Carbonneau of alt-rock outfit FRANKIIE found herself burrowing down into such a sunken place, and that’s where “Glory Me” was bred.
“I had come in one day after being out and it was late, and I was playing guitar by myself and those words came out ⎯⎯ ‘What will I be when I die?'” she says. “It’s just something that speaks about my thoughts on death. I think about it a lot, how close in proximity we are to death but a lot of the time we feel so invincible. It’s those existential things ⎯⎯ What is death? What is it going to feel like when I die? Does it happen peacefully? I can’t escape the thought, sometimes, about how close death is at any time, but that also reminds you of how much you love people and how life is so precious.”
Carbonneau’s lyrics are beautifully bleak. She makes no hesitations about expressing exactly what we’re all thinking. “They say death’s not easy / It takes work just like being born / The soul clings to the body, trying to keep warm,” she mutters into fuzzy guitar ripples. “We’re all afraid of what’s after / Taking that last sigh…” In the accompanying visual, directed by Jeremy Wallace-MacLean (JOY, The Alchemist), the group ⎯⎯ rounded out by Nashlyn Lloyd, Zoe Fuhr and Samantha Lankester ⎯⎯ pin together grainy, found-footage style pieces, bringing the lyrics into even clearer focus. It’s a snapshot, fleeting moments from a normal, starkly-lit evening walk down the street. It’s both profound and plain. At the end of the day, our lives will fade into nothingness.
FRANKIIE are currently finishing up their debut long-player, out later this year.
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