Salad Boys - “Dream Date” (Official Video)

Christchurch’s Salad Boys don’t sound enough like New Zealand’s underground rock legends of yore to qualify as torchbearers, exactly — their power-pop aesthetic is more streamlined than the ragtag post-punk jangle of the Clean and the Bats — but in terms of quality, these guys are right up there with those Flying Nun legends. “Dream Date” is our first evidence, a sparkling blast of instantly likable rock ‘n’ roll that gives me happy flashbacks to the Only Ones’ “Another Girl, Another Planet.” The song, from Salad Boys’ forthcoming debut album Metalmania, now has an official video by Ben Dodd and singer-guitarist Joe Sampson. It’s proof you can make a low-budget, low-stakes video that doesn’t suck (other DIY bands take note!). Sampson explains the clip’s genesis in a press release:

The only idea we had to begin with was that I was going to run as fast as I could up a hill to the point of collapse and that was going to the be the video. We ventured around Banks Peninsula in my car and stopped and filmed where it seemed appropriate, plus some filming of me driving. James and Ben were both out of town at the time so it obviously couldn’t be a band shoot thing, so we decided to go down the cut price DIY route instead, which I think we nailed real horrorshow. The only vaguely inspired part was trying to make some of the scenes look like a shitty New Zealand TV drama – the scenes with the Tomahawk in the forest and my face in the rear view mirror. Also, I was attempting to imitate Taylor Swift, namely in the ‘Shake It Off’ video. Not someone I identify with but who’s facial expressions I admire.