New YACHT Video: “Shangri-La”

YACHT member and my partner-in-blogging Claire Evans is much too modest to post this herself, so I’ll go ahead and do the honors. Typically, just leaving Portland for Los Angeles — let alone writing a song describing L.A. as utopia — is an offense to Stumptown punishable by death (or, y’know, a stern finger-wag), but folks around here love YACHT too much to ever excommunicate them for good. Besides, according to Claire and bandmate Jona Bechtolt, “Utopia, like reality, is not a physical experience, nor one dictated by the boundaries of a particular space.” Hence, the lyrics describing their personal Shangri-La(-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la) as a combination of the “West Texas desert,” an “Oregon summer day,” and whatever the heck Los Angeles brings to the table (smoothies, I guess).

It’s a beautiful, catchy song which, in tone at least, reminds me of Talking Heads’ “Naive Melody (This Must Be the Place).” And as a native Southern Californian, this new video — injecting bits of magical realism into the diverse geographical playground that is L.A. — makes me simultaneously nostalgic for home and intensely happy to now live where I do. Which, I’m pretty sure, was the intent. Good job, my friend!