The front-man of the New York City indie band The Chordaes, Leo Sawkin, dives straight into the river of nostalgia with his debut solo project. With his new single and music video “Row Me Away”, Leo infuses elements of 90’s grunge and rock music; taking influences from artists such as Radiohead, The Verve and The Smashing Pumpkins, to pave his very own trail into the world of folk-rock.
Capturing the essence of a spiralling daydream, Leo creates a video that blasts away from the unsettling unease of our world into a new dimension of euphoria and rapture. By focusing on the directorial visions of Walter Stern and Johnathon Glazer, Leo has been able to capture the essence of the everyday monotony, utilising a dark neon-lit room, glitchy visual effects coalesced with the ensemble of eerie pizzicato strings and hauntingly flowing vocals to start his Kafka-esque dream. With the descending fall of a piano, the video and music take off into this burst of elation.
As soon as the chorus hits, the mood of the track completely changes into the cravings for the shackle-less freedoms of a tropical paradise. Sawkin has created a genre-curving work of art that inspires a “yearning to escape” within all of us, his use of nostalgic influences helps to ground this euphoria into something so much more familiar and recognisable.