Mandy, Indiana have shared ‘Drag [Crashed]’, the final advance single ahead of the release of their debut LP, i’ve seen a way, next Friday, May 19 via Fire Talk. Following previous entries ‘Pinking Shears’, ‘Injury Detail’, and ‘Peach Fuzz’, the track arrives with a video directed by Ella Margolin (Porridge Radio, Jessica Winter) and featuring movement direction by Jacquelyn Tepper. Watch and listen below.
“‘Drag [Crashed]’ is a collection of things that were said to me or about me because I’m a woman,” the band’s Valentine Caulfield explained in a statement. “From middle-aged men saying I would ‘pop some fly buttons’ to my dad and that he would need a gun to fend off the boys when I was a literal toddler, to educators telling me my shoulders would ‘distract the boys’ and I therefore needed to cover myself, and romantic partners trying to control my body, ‘Drag’ is a personal exploration of what it means growing up a girl.”
“I spent a long time thinking about misogyny as a feeling; the power dynamics that lie at its core and the ways they manifest in our lives,” Margolin added of the video. “I was thinking about the rituals that we take part in collectively; how natural these power dynamics can feel and how blindly we play them out in our day-to-day. I really wanted to explore the violence implicit in these moments and the feeling of inevitability that underscores them. This inspired the idea of creating some form of ritualistic snog. I wanted to portray a degree of the complicity we all have in these rituals – the weight of their inevitability. I didn’t want it all to be about struggle. I wanted to represent a range of responses – apathy, fear, pride, shame, validation etc. – they all feel so present in our lives and in our engagement with these power dynamics.”
