Premiere: Idle Hands pick life apart in ‘Swarm of Fear’ video

Life is a fragmented but colorful mosaic of moments, conversations, interactions. They are fleeting but carry a much grander underlining scheme. We piece them together with the hope of understanding our place in the world. The eventual image slowly clicks into clearer focus and often leads to a moment of enlightenment, an instant of consequence and great knowledge. English indie-rock group Idle Hands engage their own expedition of mining the world on their debut single “Swarm of Fear,” a fragile but rugged downtempo untangling “somewhere between a love song and a patchwork quilt of little fragments of conversations we’ve had when we both get in at the end of the day,” frontman Jim Parkins says.

These conversations, often occurring at the end of the work day, are “the most enlightening and revealing when you’re talking to someone, especially someone you care about and have been with for a long time,” he shares with B-Sides & Badlands, premiering the song’s rather subdued and unfussy visual today. “Helen’s a psychiatric nurse and sometimes those conversations are frightening; other times they scare me, but quite often they make me happy and burst with pride.”

“I picked off the scab from the top of my shin,” Parkins sings, rather graphically but painting a picture of a simple life lodged between crucial thresholds. “Pulled my thumb away and let the blood begin. You put on your pants and then you left for work. I wiped my bloody fingers on a clean white shirt. Another day spent waiting for the evening to arrive…”

The lyrics roll across the screen like some film-noir-ish feature flick. Filmed one Sunday afternoon in Parkins and bandmate Helen Sparrow’s flat, the sequence is kept stark and branded in a black ‘n white filter, allowing the song to breathe and sink further into a deeper context. “We wanted to do a lyrics video, because ultimately, that’s a big part of what we want Idle Hands to be about ⎯⎯ trying to tell personal stories about ourselves in a way that’s both direct and poetic. In previous projects, I’ve drowned my vocals in reverb to hide what I’m saying but with this band I want people to be able to hear every word.”

The video is shot in one take, one location, one vibe and emphasizes life’s mundanity. “It’s just a little glimpse into our lives in the same way that the song itself is. The sofa that I’m sitting on is the same sofa that the song was written on and the same sofa that the habitual conversations that inform ‘Swarm of Fear’ take place every evening.’

The band hails from Newcastle upon Tyne and is rounded out by musicians and songwriters Gillian Rodgers and Jonny Sabiston. Work is currently underway on follow-up music with a project tentatively expected by year’s end.

Watch below:

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