Kind of Sad, But in a Strong Way with Gabbo and “Who Else” [Music Video Premiere]
“It feels good to do it all myself,” boasted Gabbo Franks of Washington, D.C. area freaky folk pop project Gabbo, discussing their upcoming album Corn, “but it is a bit exhausting to send out one hundred corny emails every week.”
“I’m very excited about it," Franks told Wormbrain World. The band is premiering their brand new music video for single “Who Else” today for W.W readers! The forthcoming full length is Franks’ debut long play as Gabbo, following a sprinkling of singles, b-sides, and smaller offerings, set to be released on May 5th through their own self-label Gardenhead Records. “The album follows a timeline, from Summer 2021 to Summer 2022, a big, weird, impressionable year of my life. It’s kind of sad, but in a strong way. I was listening exclusively to Arthur Russell and Panda Bear, and a lot of traumatic personal shit was happening.”
Gabbo are sharing their fresh single and music video “Who Else” today via Wormbrain World:
“It feels like releasing music! I’ve kinda got my shit more together now. I recorded the whole thing in like two or three days with Etai Fuchs [Etai, Moon By Moon] at UMBC studios with help from Sebastian McMillan [Moon By Moon, Checkmate]. From there it took me a bit to build a mixing approach, but with time I’ve gotten better at that too. Each song is similarly mixed, most tracks have a lot of the same instrumentation and atmosphere. I wanted this album to feel interconnected. I also made the decision to release it on my own, which should come to no one’s surprise considering the weird label bullshit I went through with Gabbo EP.”
“Corn is a reminder of home...”
Paired with a playful and colorsoaked music video, “Who Else” is the first taste of Corn, a nine track album that finds Franks wandering across acoustic aesthetics and adventuring into alternative new territory.
“‘Who Else’ has meaningful group vocals from a bunch of my friends, old and new - Synae, Madxsen, Love and Other Emotions, Saint Agatha, and Dead Selves all contributed their amazing voices to the track. I wanted to show that off,” they said. “It’s about taking a second to look around and identify an issue, and figuring out who to talk to about it. I hope that speaks to any potential new listeners. It has a kind of Animal Collective - Sung Tongs vibe that I’m really proud of. I hope those guys listen to my album. Could you imagine?”
Filmed by Kyle Sandhoff with assistance from Stacia Phalen and Etai Fuchs, the visual accompaniment for “Who Else” finds Franks with sparklers sparkling, walls of gummy bears, riding bikes, flowery animations, hanging out of an apartment window.
On the video’s conception, Franks divulged, “I met Kyle and his roommate Stacia in 2019 when we were all interning for the 9:30 club marketing team! This is our first time working together on a creative project, but they’ve both become staples around the DC indie D.I.Y. scene for music videos and photography / booking and running sound for shows, respectively. I was so excited when Kyle asked if I wanted to work with him on a video. He did pretty much everything aside from the music!”
“We chatted about ideas, he made a whole list of references for it, and he built a lighting rig with PVC and LED string lights for the Saoise Ronan-Grand Budapest Hotel-shot. He did all of the stop motion with pipe cleaners and paper, he picked all the locations for us to shoot — he’s a genius. He understood the concept I had in my head for the album aesthetics and exceeded it. Most of the locations are around the Bloomingdale neighborhood here in DC, where they reside in this amazing old row house — the roof/window shots were filmed there.”
Few things are as versatile and simple as “corn” but as an album title describing the collection of complex folk pop tracks, it surely must be deeper than that. Franks told Wormbrain, “Sailor from Wild at Heart would say, ‘This is corn. And for me, it’s a symbol of my individuality, and my belief in personal freedom.’ I have a tattoo of a cornstalk on the side of my left hand, a cover-up of a stick and poke triangle I attempted to give myself in 10th grade following a traumatic event. Corn is a reminder of home — Salisbury and Hebron, MD — the small rural area of the Chesapeake where I grew up; a reminder of the friends and family I love, deeply; a way of reminding myself that I got the hell out of there.”
”Tariq the Corn Kid rules. When that video began making the rounds, I was putting this album together,” reflected Gabbo, on their kindred vegetable fan band. “Everybody loves corn. I hope he listens to my album too.”
We’ll be waiting for the collab, but for now… Corn!
Wormbrain World asked Gabbo what their favorite ways to eat corn, and they told us:
GF: Cyclodextrin, a chemical found in sweet corn and potatoes, is a donut-shaped molecule used in Febreze to trap odors in its center. Don’t eat Febreze though. Grits, elote, corndogs, corn chowder, pupusas. Corn everywhere.
W.W: What is Wormbrain?
GF: Wormbrain is corn.
W.W: Thank you for sharing with Wormbrain.
Gabbo’s debut full length Corn will be released May 5th, 2023 via D.C.-based label Gardenhead Records.
