When you want to get out of somewhere, everything feels like an anchor. JP folktronica duo Skinny Bones‘s “Floor #1 // Wanderlust,” off their May album Noise Floor, starts out with dishwashing sounds — ceramic clanks like a ball and chain while water hushes reassuringly. Singer Jacob Rosati refuses to be quieted, instead singing about places he feels he belongs — how they fulfilled him; how he wishes he could return. The frustration in his voice is tempered by background “ahhhh”s and a strummed melody, until the refrain (“I’ll be there soon / I just need to find some money”). Rosati draws out the last syllable acridly. Practicality is garish but inescapable.
The video, directed by Peter Ferris Rosati, heightens the song’s themes with well-paced cuts and saturated dreamy colors. Our narrator is held in place by repeating images of citrus peels, coffee mugs, and little living things (mussels, bees) that attach themselves to big surfaces. What motion there is stays frustrated — small waves trawl back and forth, seagulls fly in circles, people get stuck at crosswalks. But when release comes, with the wordless bridge, it comes completely — planes take off, fireworks explode, entire landscapes pass in subseconds. A dog leaps. But then color flashes like hands coming off of closed eyes, and we’re back in the kitchen near the full sink, Rosati accepting his fate (“Just give me room, I’ll love it soon”). Still, we’ve definitely gone somewhere.
