By Keith Walsh
As I’ve always understood it, the literary device “unreliable narrator” is a clever way for storytellers to present information in peculiar ways that add to the flavor of the tale at hand. Conversely, an unreliable narrator is someone in families who gets stories wrong, because they are misinformed or intentionally deceiving.
When the family is the human race, and the falsehoods being told hold are told globally, with potential for tragic consequences for the planet, the stakes are much higher.
Such is the case of the titular character in the song “The Unreliable Narrator” by Night Crickets, who just dropped a mysterious video that’s every bit as spooky as the song itself. It’s from their brilliant debut album, A Free Society on Omnivore Recordings, which came out on digital in February and vinyl is just ready to ship.
The tune features a spoken word performance by Marc Warren, with main vocals by David J., and music by J., Victor DeLorenzo, and Darwin Meiners. The video was directed by Lalo Barron, and edited by Rona Rougeheart.
“The unreliable narrator/gets his intel second hand/from disreputable sources/not au fait with the ley of the land/He listens to Chinese whispers/from sisters of the church/of conspiracy and hearsay/where little birds do perch/He’s blinded not by science/but alternative facts/He looks for clues to solve the case/And falls down all the cracks.” From “The Unreliable Narrator,’ by Night Crickets.
It looks like the principle three players in Night Crickets – J., DeLorenzo, and Meiners – had a chance to get together and make this video, despite living a great distances from each other. David J, of Bauhaus and Love and Rockers, DeLorenzo of Violent Femmes, and Meiners, of a Stat·ic and also J’s manager, worked on A Free Society during the initial phases of the pandemic, when it seemed that the world was ready to go down in flames. No doubt the tumult of the times informs the topical nature of the album, which was mixed by Meiners.
Of the album, Meiners told me: “The album is the truest sense of us being ourselves and wanting to make something we thought sounded cool. It was all quite natural and easy, oddly enough.”
Night Crickets On Apple Music
Night Crickets On Spotify
Omnivore Recordings
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