photography by Kiley Rothweiler
The upcoming album by New York City-based band Imaginary People – consisting of Dylan Von Wagner, Mark Roth, Justin Repasky, Kolby Wade, Bryan Percivall, and Grant Zubritsky – can definitely be understood as a total work of art. Postponed by the pandemic, ‘Alibi’ will finally be released in spring 2022. An album full of contrasts and full of confusions with an inevitable chemistry that you can not escape.
Even so this chemistry can be already felt when listening to “Soft Token”, a single from the new album, which takes you down a slower alt-indie sound that makes you instantly connect with the song. There’s something melancholy about it, with an intangible beauty. Imaginary People often reflect occurrences that happen around them in their music, and mixing it with their personal feelings. Perhaps their music is also a kind of attempt to escape the often dystopic approach of our world, and at the same time flow into it to make a place for themselves.
“Imaginary People are just in our own little world.” explains Von Wagner. “I don’t think we really participate, we live in New York and it was made here, but we just keep to ourselves. I don’t know where this stuff comes from or why I feel this way and write this shit. I feel like it’s a weird addiction that I can’t shake, and I don’t think any psychoanalysis is going to shed light on it.” He continues: “It’s about what happens when your town is replaced with something that seems to sway on the benign and it kind of leaves you with this dread. It’s all spread out in this cookie cutter mold, and the town doesn’t have its own personality – just another brush stroke on the bland canvas of suburbia.”
Speaking about the video Von Wagner says, “A wealthy black market art dealer is exposed by his client, a Thai opium syndicate, for selling them a fraudulent 40 million dollar dinosaur skeleton. The art dealer discovers his clients want revenge and he resigns to accept his fate. Having a sense of humor, the gangsters send the assassin in a Trex costume to taunt him outside his house before doing the deed.” The video was filmed in Argentina and directed (her directorial debut) by Dylan Von Wagner’s wife Kiley Rothweiler, of who you catch a sight of in the end.
Enjoy the video below:
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