Premiere: Pennan Brae pays homage to ’70s NYC with new lyric video, ‘Pay Dirt’

New York City in the 1970s has a dirty charm to it. If you revisit such classic sitcoms as The Jeffersons and Taxi, you’re immersed in what feels like another life altogether. Even more, the metropolis was a hotbed for vast musical styles, melting and grooving together, often fracturing in countless directions. Vancouver musician Pennan Brae paints his own romanticized version of the city with his song “Pay Dirt,” a slimy and contagious cut from his latest record, 2 Below O. The accompanying lyric video, premiering today, reads as a classic sitcom theme song, as the bubble letters soak across the screen, adorning heavily-filtered, throwback-stylized footage of NYC streets. You half expect George Jefferson to pop on screen.

“There’s no time to delay / Fan out / Reroute / Don’t let the word get out,” whispers Brae into foggy electric winds. “Go track it / That sound / Slow hack it / Expound / Go jack it / Surround / Mack tack it.”

In utilizing such vintage-swept imagery, Brae underlines the song’s fiercely angst-driven core, rotating his wispy vocal cords around a raw, visceral super-charge. “[This song] was written during a period of personal frustration: financial frustration, sexual frustration… you name it. And those feelings seeped their way into the guitar chords and driving nature of the song,” he offers B-Sides & Badlands over email.

“I’m a big fan of New York City in the late 1970s into the early 80s. It was an epicenter containing a rich buffet of musical genres. There was the irreverent punk scene, extravagant disco clubs, new wave bands cresting the horizon and timeless rock ‘n roll with some great albums by The Rolling Stones,” he continues. The song, then, marries “the punk spirit and rock ‘n roll of that time,” he notes, “and I enjoy how director Rob Fitzgerald captured the essence of ’70s NYC in the music video; it’s dripping with grit, grime and glamour, as the lyrics splash across the screen demonstrating the personal turmoil within.”

“Pay Dirt” dresses up with unfussy, yet sharp-toothed, lyrics. That’s how he casts his spell; he draws you in with the song’s swirling ambience, and you stay for the frank conversation about life’s many frustrating, wildly universal elements. “All I wanted in this spinning big wide world was you / Then you turned proclaimed we’re thru,” he calls.  “Situation comes unglued / Don’t know what’s hearsay or true.”

Watch below:

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