Nation of Language have shared ‘Too Much Enough’, the latest preview of their forthcoming album Strange Disciple. The track arrives with an accompanying video directed by Robert Kolodny and starring Jimmi Simpson (Westworld, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia) as well as musician including Reggie Watts, Kevin Morby, Tomberlin, Moldy Peaches’ Adam Green, and LVL UP’s Greg Rutkin. Watch and listen below.
Elaborating on the new song in a press release, the band said:
‘Too Much, Enough’ is a song born out of an exhaustion with the 24 hour news cycle and the outrage bait it uses to get everyone permanently wound up. It seems the only way to find an edge in the media business is to appeal to our most base instincts of disgust (see: the high ratings of Fox News, etc.), and we end up suffering both individually and collectively for it.
When it came to creating a visual to go alongside the song, we didn’t want the music video to be its own form of outrage bait so we went with a more absurdist approach, gathering some friends of ours, and of our incredible director Robert Kolodny, to make something fun and outlandish to that effect. We also laced the video with as many NOL-related Easter eggs and iconography as possible to give anyone watching an opportunity to play along at home and be a part of that absurdity. It felt good to try to name a problem for ourselves without leaning on fear and rage.
It’s a powerful thing to deny someone the ability to manipulate your most destructive emotions, and that’s something we want to celebrate here.
The overarching theme of Strange Disciple is infatuation and how one’s reality can be warped by it. We went a more romantic route with that on the previous video, but News is one of those less interpersonal activities it feels like everyone takes part in, so we wanted to show our disciple is just as susceptible to it as any other figure.
Strange Disciple, the follow-up to 2021’s A Way Forward, is set for release on September 15 via PIAS. It includes the previously released singles ‘Sole Obsession’, ‘Weak in Your Light’, and ‘Stumbling Still’.
