Lala Lala Looks Back in Beautiful “Scary Movie” Video

Lala Lala, the Chicago-based indie rock project of Lillie West, has released a video for the song “Scary Movie” off her album The Lamb, released today, Sept. 28, through Hardly Art Records.

“Scary Movie” is full of the sort of waterlogged beauty that West provides in spades on The Lamb. The song is a gentle, wistful conversation with herself about herself, but the video re-contextualizes it into a love letter from the past. The video features 16mm footage of West’s parents, taken before she was born, flying kites on a beach. That’s it. The entire video is the two of them, the beach and the kite. It’s insanely beautiful.

Watching them frolic while their daughter’s voice serenades them from the future is really something—at times, the setting is eerily reminiscent of the cover art for The Lamb, and the kite’s errant flight pattern feels tailor-made for the song. But it’s not. It’s something that actually happened, which is a theme that West grapples with all over the record. She’s stated before how The Lamb came from a period of trauma in her life, and how it’s a method of reckoning with lost loved ones. In that way, this video feels like an encapsulation of what West was working through on The Lamb. It’s about the past and the way it moves in tandem with the present, even if you can no longer see it.

West herself said something similar in a statement about the video: “I wanted to use this 16mm footage my parents took of each other before I was born because although I didn’t exist yet, their experience is in some way a part of me … This is where I came from, but if I view it as memory, I am technically wrong. It feels real and fake at the same time, which is how every day feels sometimes, and is what the song is about.”

Lala Lala will be playing a record release show at the Empty Bottle in Chicago tonight, and will be continuing on a national tour from there—dates further down.

Watch the video for “Scary Movie” below.

Lala Lala North American Tour Dates:

September
28 – Chicago, Ill. @ Empty Bottle (Album Release Show)

October
02 – New Orleans, La. @ Gasa Gasa %
03 – Houston, Texas @ White Oak Music Hall %
04 – Austin, Texas @ Barracuda %
05 – Dallas, Texas @ Curtain Club %
06 – San Antonio, Texas @ Paper Tiger %
08 – El Paso, Texas @ Lowbrow Palace %
09 – Tucson, Ariz. @ 191 Toole %
10 – San Diego, Calif. @ Soda Bar %
11 – Santa Ana, Calif. @ Constellation Room %
12 – Los Angeles, Calif. @ Resident %
13 – San Francisco, Calif. @ Cafe Du Nord %

November
01 – Indianapolis, Ind. @ The HiFi #
02 – Cleveland, Ohio @ Beachland Ballroom #^
04 – Minneapolis, Minn. @ Cedar Cultural Center #^
05 – Omaha, Neb. @ Waiting Room #
06 – Kansas City, Mo. @ Record Bar #
08 – Denver, Colo. @ Gothic Theater #
09 – Salt Lake City, Utah @ Urban Lounge #
10 – Boise, Idaho @ Visual Arts Collective #
12 – Seattle, Wash. @ Neumo’s #
13 – Portland, Ore. @ Revolution Hall #
14 – Eugene, Ore. @ WOW Hall #
21 – St. Louis, Mo. @ Ready Room #
23 – Detroit, Mich. @ Loving Touch #^
24 – Pittsburgh, Pa. @ Sprit Hall #^
25 – Hamden, Conn. @ Space Ballroom #
27 – Portsmouth, N.H. @ 3S Artspace #
28 – Boston, Mass. @ The Sinclair #
29 – Philadelphia, Pa. @ Union Transfer #
30 – Brooklyn, N.Y. @ Elsewhere #

December
01 – Washington, D.C. @ U Street Music Hall #
03 – Richmond, Va. @ The Broadberry #
04 – Durham, N.C. @ Motorco Music Hall #
05 – Atlanta, Ga. @ Terminal West #
06 – Asheville, N.C. @ Grey Eagle #
07 – Nashville, Tenn. @ Exit / In #
08 – Lexington, Ky. @ Cosmic Charlies #

(# w/ WHY?)
(% w/ Mothers)
(^ w/ The Ophelias)