S.M. Wolf is the brainchild of Adam Gross. Gross is the longtime front man of Indianapolis rock outfit Amo Joy. Last year, he released a new batch of material recorded over a weekend at his home studio. The songs eventually comprised a five-track, self-titled EP released last fall on In Store Recordings. Gross and label manager, Derek Vorndran, tapped creative duo BrainTwins to handle the video for the EP's lead single "King of the Suits."
"We asked Adam about his inspiration for the song and he mentioned he was sick when he wrote it the previous February," BrainTwins said in an email. "One of the lyrics he specifically brought up was "oh no you faded" which represented the feeling of not doing anything for a while and the prospect of doing something else... Adam told us this story of how when he was sick, he was watching TV and falling asleep and waking up at random moments where he was really confused about what he was seeing. We thought it would be fun to create a version of this TV watching experience by creating "channels" acting like alternate dimensions merging the subconscious mind with what you see on TV."
Gross echoed that memory, saying "King of the Suits" centered around a "pessimistic rut" that he occasionally finds himself in creatively, where nothing proves appealing. From the outset, S.M. Wolf chose animation for the direction of the video, which plays into the blend of analog and digital that serves as BrainTwins' signature aesthetic. Every frame of the video was painstakingly hand-drawn and then scanned into the computer for animating.
"To gather inspiration, we watched tons of internet-archived cartoons, commercials, news broadcasts, etc. from the late 1920s to the 1950s, 60s, 70s and beyond," BrainTwins said. "We wanted to include segments that you would probably encounter while watching TV today (news, weather, sports, commercials, cartoons) but in the style of a variety of decades - like caricatures of each type of program."
"We started working on the animation last October whenever we had a spare moment," BrainTwins said. "Mostly during the night after our commercial work for the day had been completed, we would just draw until we couldn't anymore... It was a tedious process but we learned a lot by experimenting with many techniques."
Gross was thrilled with the final outcome, saying: "I thought they did a fantastic job of tying in the theme of the song while also making something that could almost stand on its own as a short film... It's upbeat and there's a slight hint of quirk, but it's also slightly dark and tormented with a little angst. I was just shocked at how much work they had put into the video, being completely hand-drawn."
Watch the video for "King of the Suits" below, and grab your copy of the EP on 7" vinyl or digital download via Bandcamp.
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