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Apr 20, 2021 By Caleb Campbell Photography by Kenneth Bauer

LA-based, New England-bred indie rock band The Rare Occasions have returned, sharing the first video from their upcoming sophomore full-length record, Big Whoop.

Following their 2018 debut, the band parted ways with their fourth member and began work on Big Whoop as a three-piece, forcing their sound in new directions and requiring the band to be tighter than ever as a group. The DIY recording and mixing process was done almost entirely in lead singer Brian McLaughlin’s living room and spare bedroom while each member shares production credits on the songs. The resulting record pushes into electronic soundscapes and swelling orchestral arrangements, expanding the band’s sound while remaining rooted in indie and garage rock.

The band have already shared “Stay,” the first single from the upcoming record and now they’ve debuted the accompanying video, premiering early with Under the Radar.

“Stay” is one of the band’s most quietly expansive tracks yet, featuring an insistent electronic pulse and somber lyricism. However, the undeniable highlight is the track’s cinematic orchestral accompaniment, subtly building on the moody instrumentation until it bursts into dramatic life. As McLaughlin shares, “[Bassist Jeremy Cohen] came up with this somber-sounding 7/4 guitar lick, and I started building the song around that with the lyrics and the quiet breakdown towards the end. [Drummer Luke Imbusch] came up with the bridge - he’s a film/TV composer and orchestrated a part for strings and horns and conducted the string quartet in my living room when we recorded them.”

Meanwhile, the accompanying video follows an unraveling relationship through a series of stop-motion vignettes, constructing a surreal world of frozen seconds in a relationship’s last moments. The band says, “After hearing an early, unfinished version of the song, director Chelsea Lutz pitched us the idea of showcasing her interpretation of the lyrics through a variety of abstract cinematic vignettes, seemingly frozen in time. Director of Photography Kenneth Bauer shot the video using two cameras side-by-side to create a suitably unsteady jitter effect. We learned to play the song at double speed to compensate for the slow-motion frame rate, while actors Griffin Scanlan & Alyssa Timpson play the main subjects of the song.”

Lutz continues, “The Rare Occasions created such an emotionally rich and cinematic song for “Stay” that I knew I wanted to make a video that was visually distinctive and would help tell this story in the best way possible.” Check out the video below and watch for Big Whoop, out June 18th.