Alec Spicer
Fort Worth Surf-Rock Trio Phantomelo Weathers A Perfect Storm In The Video For The Dreamy New Single Off Their Water Your Friends EP.
Welcome to Song of the Day, where we hip you to all the new local releases you should be caring about. By highlighting one new North Texas-sprung tune every week day, our hope is that you’ll find something new to love about the rich and abundant DFW music scene five days a week.
Phantomelo – “The Tempest”
RIYL: Unwitting climate change PSAs.
What Else You Should Know: On the follow-up to their 2019 debut EP, William Rakkar, Panda Cuenca and Jeff Gerardi of Phantomelo have built upon their unmistakable chemistry for their best release yet.
On Friday, the trio dropped Water Your Friends Pt. 1, offering up a set of brand new surf-rock bangers. While EP opener “The Tempest” is worthy of instant replay, it’s best heard while watching the fantastic music video by Coffee Pot Films.
The song itself shifts between dreamy and chaotic energies led by Rakkar’s apathetic lyricism as he wails, “The big one’s coming/I don’t care,” in a moment of the music video’s foreshadowing.
The visual for “The Tempest” begins with Phantomelo surrounded by lush woodlands before they’re suddenly cycled through waves of flames and tempered seashores — just another day of erratic Texas weather, really. Gerardi’s crashing of the drums strike with an eruption of riffs from Cuenca and Rakkar around the three-minute mark as the trio is engulfed by wreckage from the thunderstorm they’ve unknowingly conjured. Cuenca’s verses, though brief, provide for the perfect ghostly narration throughout the video’s climate change-like transitions.
At the core of what makes “The Tempest” great is the band’s ability, both visually and sonically, to channel their contagious dynamic — somehow they manage to look even more raw while miming on inflatable guitars and a toy drum set at one point in the video.
If they were a tropical storm before, “The Tempest” just upgraded Phantomelo to full-on hurricane.