Blair Gun Finds Himself Caught Between Past and Present in New “Beat Happened” Video

Last March, Blair gun released his first album Queen of blasphemywhich explicitly draws on various aspects of alternative rock established and perfected in the 1990s. I’m guessing that in the 15 months between March 2023 and the release of their new follow-up, There are no rival clones here, the band must have realized that the entire landscape of contemporary rock music seems to be influenced by this same era, with shoegaze and lo-fi room-pop dominating the airwaves and playlists. Naturally, that led to a little temporal reflection on this new album – on tracks riffing on band names from the late ’80s/early ’90s and beyond.

“‘Beat Happened’ was a very thoughtful song for us,” the band shares in the album snippet. “We have a lot of experiences of being labeled and going around in circles with bands that are all considered ‘post’, something or a revival movement. The song attempts to reflect on our conflicting feelings of respect and progression. Musical movements may never die these days because of the modern rock landscape, but we want to escape the romanticized ideas of iconic scenes, pretending we’re arriving in 2000s Brooklyn or 1980s DC. It would be astonishing to imagine ourselves appearing in a time and place as momentous as these highly revered scenes, but the longing for what once was has rarely created exciting new ideas.

Today, the band shares a video for the track that seems reverential of the MTV era without being explicitly nostalgic for it. Bands being filmed playing their songs to an empty room is a pretty timeless concept, after all. Watch the Alyssa Kuhl-directed clip below and learn more about Blair Gun here.