Premiere: Violet Crime's new 'EOD' a pensive, soulful look at growing up
Violet Crime is looking for the answers to life, and they need them by the end of the day, thanks.
With the new song and video for “EOD,” premiering exclusively today, the Chicago-based fivesome explores the existential questions that flood in as a 20-something starts to see life as a 30-something on the horizon.
Soulful and doubting in tone but lambent in execution, “EOD” addresses the dread many face as jobs unexpectedly morph into careers and the line between “what I do” and “who I am” starts to blur.
In the song, Geneva-native Jeff Mills takes the lead mic, punctuated by vocal and musical harmonies from Selina Doran, Kasey Gandham, Tom Goier (also originally from Geneva) and Kevin Nagel (formerly of Mundelein).
“It's just very much our lives, our demographic. And especially with remote work now becoming the whole thing the past three years, it's really forced us, or forced me at least, to look at how working plays into my life and maybe the troubles that it causes,” Mills said. “That could be because of the change of the times. It could just be because I'm turning 30 soon and you just start thinking.”
“EOD” - workplace slang for “end of day” - references a search for purpose, a quest to find a story worth telling and the feeling that sometimes one has to keep wants, needs, ambitions and individuality stifled until the end of the workday as a part of a bigger machine. It asks if everyone else feels how the songwriter is and touches on the lengths people will sometimes go to just feel something.
“The song was about ... kind of like masking, whatever it may be. And just saying all I know how to do is survive,” he said. “At every moment, I don't necessarily feel like I know what I'm doing. But I just know how to survive, just get through this moment until the next one.”
Mills gives full credit for the song's title and a little polishing of the meaning to filmmaker Monica Thornton, who created and directed the accompanying video showcasing a day of commutes and work calls while Mills carries his inner monologue in the form of lyrics on a portable sign.
“It almost completed the meaning of the song,” he said. “It carries this context of a deadline or a transition or whatever, like a delineation.”
That sense of ending is fitting in that the song marks the start of a new phase for Violet Crime. Changing times have set band members in new directions and locations, and with some away from the Chicago area for extended periods of time, they've mastered writing music remotely. It also is the first time they've worked with Detroit/L.A.-based producer Jacob Sigman, who will be coming to Chicago to perform a set of his own music at the single's release show at Subterranean Saturday, July 1. The lineup for the event also features The Weekend Run Club and Zoe Brown.
“EOD” is an unintentional (but tightly meshing) follow-up to “The Mess,” a song off Violet Crime's “Writers & Poets” EP released in late May. Both address the perils and mundanities of Millennial life in the workforce and the sense the strings being pulled are outside of one's control.
But despite all that rumination, Violet Crime seems well on the way to having an answer to at least some of it - through community. Between Mills' local musician-driven “Set List” podcast and bassist Gandham's involvement with Play Together, a social impact artist management company he co-founded, along with the Make Space open mic series they plan on bringing back, the band has spread its influence and crafted connections throughout the area music scene over the last seven years.
“I think it's this community we have built around ourselves and the people we bring into that community to lift them up,” Gandham said. “For us in the big picture, this band has never had these sexy goals of doing these big aspirational things. ... We didn't really want to blow up. We wanted to be a great Chicago band that was part of the community.”
“We just wanted to be best friends. And that's the story of the band. And that's what we'll keep doing.”
Violet Crime, Jacob Sigman, The Weekend Run Club and Zoe Brown
When: 8 p.m. Saturday, July 1 (doors open at 7 p.m.)
Where: Subterranean, 2011 W. North Ave., Chicago, subt.net
Tickets: $15