Premiere: The It City comment on fake online culture with ‘All Shine, No Silver’ video

What you see on social media is rarely what you get in real life. It’s an impermanent safety net that also operates to postpone the inevitable crash of reality, which continues to ferment below a glossy, manufactured surface. Calling upon such a glitzy fixture of today’s culture, Nashville funk-pop group The It City clicks their feet and tongues on a new song called “All Shine, No Silver,” paired with a high-glam new music video, premiering today. “Despite all the calls for urgency, we never thought it’d come to be / Is this the world we want to see / Or can we call emergency,” ring leader DJ Phillips parses on the second stanza, tearing down the makeshift battlements they’ve constructed around their real identities.

The visual, directed by Jeremiah Reynolds, who previously helmed the band’s “Make It Look Easy” clip, sparkles under the stage lights with a royal sheen. Each band member, including Derrek Phillips (drums), Rich Brinsfield (bass) and Reed Pittman (keyboards), flutters with weird body waves in starburst-approved attire ⏤ giant, appropriately-glittered sphere-heads bobbing to the groove of a big horn-basted backdrop. “We’re always eager for a chance to work with Jeremiah again. After listening to the song, he came to us with a couple different great video concepts, and this was the clear favorite,” says DJ over email to B-Sides & Badlands. “He went to work crafting orb heads out of sparkly paint, papier-mâché and sheer willpower.”

Later, DJ turns his gaze to discovering a solution for the disconnect between on- and offline living. “It’s all on us to fix it now / Expect us to bend but never bow,” he sings, spraying his inner light like a front lawn sprinkler system. “We’ll figure out the whens and hows / But this is a fate we can’t allow.” The video, after which they’re “still finding glitter in weird places,” quips DJ, situates Daft Punk charm against Blue Man Group absurdity, while wrapping tighter to their flourishing, off-kilter aesthetic. The band has a collectively impressive resume, which includes session work with Maren Morris, Brothers Osborne and Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, among others.

“Like the song itself, the video exists on two levels. You can think about what the over-sized headgear, the cheap backgrounds and the matching colors say about the artifices we put forward in public while reality festers underneath,” DJ details of sequence. “Or…you can enjoy the silly dancing, pick out your favorite character and have a good time because sometimes it’s a relief to just enjoy something.”

“All Shine, No Silver” samples the band’s upcoming self-titled debut EP, out April 12.

Watch below:

Follow The It City on their socials: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Website