Day drinking, loneliness, and dollar-store phantoms take center stage in California alt-crooner Caleb Nichols’ new music video for “Jerome” off their new album Ramon (via Kill Rock Stars).
Blocking out the blaring summer sun, Caleb Nichols takes up tacit company with a group of ghosts whose spectral forms are more, akin to last-minute Halloween costumes. The four-minute-long video directed by Katie Neville is cloistered and heady, with the phantoms playing party games and dancing about.
Cinematographer Jason Kaiser cuts between the haunted band and a spectral version of Nichols themselves, whose strumming becomes more unhinged as the minutes tick on.
While queer folks have begun to dominate the indie-folk and singer-songwriter scenes, Caleb Nichols cements that their particular twist of queer DIY ethos often tends to be drowned out by their nepotism baby contemporaries in favor of more mainstream bedroom pop tracks. “You learn early on that no one is going to do it for you, or that what you are wanting to see or hear doesn’t exist,” Nichols authors on their Bandcamp, “so you need to do it yourself with your friends.”
Ramon is a queer retelling of The Beatles’ rogue gallery characters on songs like “Mean Mr. Mustard” and his equally alliterative sister “Polythene Pam”. On Nichol’s website, the album is billed as a rock opera in eleven tracks. RAMON is sunny, sleepy, and packed with commentary on societal pressures and dancing with one’s inner spirits with a dash of inspiration from late labelmate Elliot Smith.
Midway through the video, Nichols discovers they are not the only “human” at this undead party. In fact, they pull off the sheets of two ghosts who are snuggling on the fringes of the dancefloor. In disgust, they storm away from the pair and go back to getting roaring drunk with the other haunts who need not have real faces. Dizzying as a hangover on a hot afternoon, the video continues to whirl. There are brief moments of Nichols dancing in a smoky room covered in a sheet, his movements equal parts graceful and erratic. They call out to the titular “Jerome” asking, why is it so hard to find love? Not just these days, but centuries past from the seemingly romantic Victorian period to the loose sexuality of the 1969 to the end-of-the-world excess of the 90s. In the words of one Orville Peck, Nichols only wants a heart to haunt.
Sunny queer isolation is zeitgeist right now, especially in the wake of COVID (i.e Wisconsin’s Orange Drink and TikTok darlings 90’s dreamboy). However, like many queer folks, Nichols is unsure of how to return to the world, especially one that is making it increasingly obvious that it isn’t as accepting as corporate pride might make it seem. Is it safer for one’s health and mental stability to stay in the comfort of your own home? Or is the weight of one’s thoughts their own glaring psychopomps?
Tickets for the RAMON tour is currently on sale. Click HERE to view the remaining tour dates. Want more of Caleb Nichols? Be sure to connect with him on social media including Twitter and Instagram.
