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Live Review: Paul Conrad ‘California’ (Official Video)

16 October 2015 | 11:59 am | Katie Rowley

The brooding PAUL CONRAD has offered up his own contribution to the saturated sunshine state in the form of his beautiful and morbid single, ‘California’.

California is the millennial’s muse, and the brooding PAUL CONRAD has offered up his own contribution to the saturated sunshine state in the form of his beautiful and morbid single, ‘California’.

Slotting in nicely amongst other Cali-labelled tracks of recent years, Conrad’s new video resurrects much of the same imagery and tropes that we saw in the likes of Phantom Planet, Tupac, Katy Perry and The Eagles’ classic Cali theme tune.

Lyrics include abrasive half rhymes such as “Met a girl on the 4th of July / She OD’ed in the back of my car / Turned out she liked to see stars”. Not exactly politically correct, but then again I reckon that Sydney new boy Paul Conrad, or, as we’re going to call him for the purposes of this sentence, PC isn’t fussed about being PC.

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Yen Mag has set the Sydneysider as a match for Lana Del Ray’s California apocalypse genre, and Conrad has just confirmed a signing with Primary Talent, the agency who look after bookings for Lana and also maverick Sydney lad Kirin J Callinan.

Conrad’s video looks like it was inspired by Sofia Coppola’s film “Somewhere”, which depicts the detached and destructive stasis of life in Hollywood’s famed Chateau Marmont – Conrad’s own shimmery pop harbours a very noir undertone, which surmises these typical LA images.

Visually, he looks every part the ‘guy in a band’ with his straggles of long brown hair and a handle bar moustache. Musically, the single sounds a little like Sundara Karma or City Calm Down in terms of the amalgamation of electronic samples and beat work with punchy guitar riffs.

‘California’ is the follow up single to ‘Records’, another dark, trippy single that deals with much of the same sex, drugs and rock n roll content that we find on ‘California’; except the message here has been updated to tell tales of facelifts, prescription pills and the death of vinyl. Both tracks will feature on Conrad’s forthcoming EP, set for release in the early new year.

Words by Katie Rowley

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