Do you know what an auroch is? To be frank, I had not clue. But, according to my Googling (I mean, research) an auroch is a now extinct type of cattle that used exist in Europe, Asia, and North Africa. It looks like this: a massive cow. The reason I am bringing this up on a music website is because for Toronto band Omhouse, their newest single, “Aurock,” was supposed to be titled after this long gone beast. Steven Foster told Noisey via email that he wrote this fairly “swaggery, prog-rock vibe” that would form the instrumentation of “Aurock” and it kept making him think of this very extinct, albeit impressive, animal.But the song from the Toronto rock band has nothing to do with an actual auroch. Instead, the song has a far more emotionally driven and poignant perspective on communication and connection. “Aurock” is the first single from the band’s new album Eye to Eye, slated for release on January 26, which is their first full-length in five years. The track has jangly, swirling guitars in the intro but then swoops forward into some extremely terse, tight licks. “The song is about when you project onto someone because you can't get close to them and the dissonance it creates in the way you relate to them,” says Foster.The video for the track is absurd, which works somehow very well against the more heartfelt, open lyrics. Directed by Adrienne McLaren and co-directed by Foster, it begins with him sitting in Toronto’s Bickford Park typing on a typewriter and then talking on the phone. At one point, later in the video, Foster even goes through a pile of other smartphones, tossing them off into the abyss. What we're given here are fantastic in nature visuals on how hard it is for us (the general us) to talk to one another; highlighted by way of a plastic bird flying through the air, too, or wooden hands touching. “The video is a much more silly take on the theme of trying and failing to communicate. Everything about our band has become a lot sillier recently except for the actual music,” says Foster. He continues: “The original idea for the video involved telegraphs and ESP and a cellphone-juggling dance cult, but there wasn't room. Aside from being fun to watch, I think the video adds a dimension that doesn't really come through in the song, which is how totally silly you feel when you realize you've been living in a fantasy."Eye to Eye will be released on January 26, 2018. Watch the video above.
Advertisement