Making a choice to leave is hard. It can be leaving a room when the situation gets dicey, leaving a relationship when it gets toxic, or leaving home when you just need a change. Even when you feel like it’s the right choice, sentimental thoughts can still rattle around your brain. That’s part of the genesis for Seattle band Monsterwatch’s “Lost My Car” from their Z O T EP released earlier this year.
“The song itself was written a few months after I moved to Seattle,” lead vocalist John Spinney tells KEXP via email, detailing he and drummer Jack Cornwell’s sojourn to the Northwest from New Hampshire. “I was feeling fairly homesick so I decided to write the song as a goodbye (but obviously not forever) to me and Jack's friends and family back home.”
Musically, it’s easy to read the song as a kiss off to a past life and the resulting disorientation of leaving small town life for the big city. The music video – filmed by Eric Luck – finds Spinney embracing this new lifestyle. The backyard setting of the video harkens back to ideals of suburbia (I can’t help but be reminded of the Adventures of Pete and Pete opening credits every time the camera zooms in on a lawn ornament), but Spinney himself looks quintessential Seattle while smoking a cigarette and wearing reflective shades. He carries the cool confidence of a city local while still singing about being (quite literally) lost to the point where he can’t remember where he parked his car in this new town.
Spinney adds that the concept of the video is “simply about expressing your true self and being out of your comfort zone, whether it be moving to a new city or just going through a big change in life.” As he lays in the grass with his guitar, amidst the flowers and the gleaming sunshine, Spinney looks undeniable comfortable with himself – even embracing a bit of goofiness when he jumps up from behind a hedge to lip sync his “woo!” ad libs. Despite the anxiety of making a change, it seems like maybe he and the band made the right choice.
Watch the video below.
