(photo: Brady Harvey)
Let’s just declare this William Cremin Week here at Artist Home. Aside from his Seattle music scene credentials as a member of some of this ‘burg’s best bands (Cumulus, The Torn ACLs, and Roaming Herds of Buffalo among them), Cremin’s also a member of Invisible Shivers (whose great new record got the deep-dive treatment from us yesterday). And Artist Home is thrilled to premiere the video for the new track by Cremin’s band The Environment, “A Beat Called Love.”
The Environment is, in essence, a new name for The Torn ACLs (at least according to the ACLs’ Facebook page), and Cremin’s jones for crafting sparkling pop remains a constant here. “A Beat Called Love” leans heavily into the more danceable end of his songwriting spectrum.
A shuffling, sample-laden melody line hiccups and bobs along. Then the tune’s buoyed by an almost retro-sounding combination of acoustic and electric percussion that provides the foot-tapping foundation. Cremin’s voice is at its most guileless and boyish, radiating untethered joy. It’s a classic example of creating a memorable slab of pure pop out of everything including the kitchen sink—like Beck commandeering the best boy-band single you’ve never heard.
The song gets a fun (and spot-on) visual treatment in the video. Cremin’s Cumulus bandmate Sebastien Deramat directed, shot, and edited the clip from a concept by both of them. In it, Cremin offers an informal guided tour through his geodesic real-life home, dancing like a carefree fool, performing some ace drumstick twirling, and sliding down the banister like a grown-up Kevin McCallister.
Deramat’s editing makes a whimsical visual coda out of one of those drumsticks, and what could’ve been a lazy visual representation of the song becomes as lively, unexpected, and grin-inducingly happy as the tune it’s bolstering.
It’s a fool’s errand to try to forecast any sort of breakout status for a musician or song in this fragmented, segmented musical climate. But “A Beat Called Love” deserves to be (and has all the ingredients of) a big hit. You heard—and saw—it here first.
